


Pinned

by bionically



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Blowjobs, Cunnilingus, Dildos, Dom Hermione Granger, Dominance, Draco with blue balls, Drunk Draco Malfoy, Edging, F/M, He agreed to it but tagging it just to be safe., Hermione has the upper hand, In more ways than one, Kind of noncon?, Let me know if additional tags are needed, Multi, Obsessive Behavior, Obsessive Draco Malfoy, Pegging, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Draco Malfoy, Redemption, References to Drugs, Sex Dreams, Sexually frustrated Draco, Submission, Tagging as I go, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unwilling to be sub Draco, Voyeurism, complete trash, facesitting, handjob, if Draco's lucky, sex fighting, sexual fantasies, the joke's on Draco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-01-16 08:42:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 110,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21268226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bionically/pseuds/bionically
Summary: Draco doesn't know what he's expecting when he follows Blaise down a dark alley, but it certainly isn't this.For a man with an addictive personality, this isn't going to turn out well.Assigned trope: Voyeurism***Or, a chance encounter with a frizzy-haired witch from his misbegotten past in the last place anyone should have expected to see her sets Draco's disordered life on its ear.The path to redemption is truly paved with unexpected surprises.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I initially started this as a PWP, but the character development sort of got out of hand. As such, expect lots of feelings as Draco comes to terms with his past, his inculcation, and deals with unhealthy habits that stemmed from all that. Essentially all because he happens to stumble across a bushy-haired feisty gal from his past, in an unsavoury setting he definitely hadn't planned on seeing.

* * *

It was the third time in a week that Blaise had cancelled, and Draco was not having it.

"What could be so important that you'd turn down a night at the races?" Draco asked through the Floo, not bothering to moderate his irritation. "”This is the fifth time already.”"

"Dear me, is gambling not so fun without boring little old me?" Even set amidst flickering green flames, Blaise’s smirk was evident.

Draco didn't plan on letting Blaise know that it had indeed been a lot more tedious without a handy companion to keep away the riffraff. It was inevitable that a single, wealthy wizard appearing alone at a social function would be besieged by a constant stream of callers at his box. "How I do enjoy seeing you lose,” Draco said instead. Smugly reminding Blaise of his losses the last time would surely do the trick to entice him to attend again.

Flame-encased Blaise tilted his head sideways and eyed Draco speculatively. "Have you ever considered you might just have a gambling problem? To add to the list of all the other problems, that is.” 

"Nonsense." Draco dismissed that immediately. "I win far more than I lose."

"That's what they all say," Blaise said, tilting his head backwards to regard Draco with what seemed like too much amusement. “You must agree, Malfoy, that all this racing gets a bit tedious after a while.”

Draco did not, in fact, agree, as he was actually going significantly more often than just once a week. Nobody had to know that, of course. Not even Blaise. Nobody had to know that in addition to the gambling parlors and the racetracks that Draco had recently discovered the joys of fight night at the dragon pit.

"You enjoyed Lisboa the other week.” Even to himself, he sounded as sullen as a toddler.

"I guess it wasn’t too shabby," Blaise said, the admission sounding as reluctant as someone about to have an embedded wisdom tooth extracted. "But only every once in a while."

"Precisely. So, tonight then?" Draco almost felt like rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

Blaise seemed torn and then he took a deep breath. "It’ll have to be tomorrow. I have plans for tonight." At Draco's expression of betrayal, Blaise relented even further. "I'll even front the first round of bets."

Draco muttered something noncommittal and watched suspiciously as his friend murmured something about having plans and hurriedly disappeared from the Floo.

A horrible thought struck him as he stayed by the fireplace on his knees. What if Blaise had gotten a girlfriend? Draco could see more of his pastimes reduced to solo trips as a result. Not to mention the fact that Blaise was so easily persuaded that he would probably change into an entirely different (boring) person if he found a moralising girlfriend.

That just wouldn't do at all.

* * *

Blaise’s actions didn't seem in the least bit furtive, which further suggested to Draco that Blaise was now in a public relationship. He stealthily followed him from the cafe where Blaise had been taking in his afternoon tea, suspicions growing stronger when Blaise didn’t look left or right or even seem to be aware that he was being followed. From his quick, sure footsteps, it appeared that this route towards Knockturn Alley was a familiar one. Draco continued stalking his prey until Blaise stopped in front of an old-fashioned wooden door with a ripped awning.

Then he stepped out of the shadows and took off the silencing charms on his shoes and the Notice-Me-Not on his general person.

"So this is where you've been sneaking off to?" Draco's whisper was a hiss against Blaise's profile. "Have you been holding out on me?"

Draco’s grip on Blaise’s shirt collar prevented him from jumping into the air, though Blaise did squeak very satisfyingly in a high-pitched voice. "You scared the living daylights out of me.“ Blaise’s eyes narrowed. “Did...did you follow me here?"

Draco’s expression was that of a man patiently explaining things to a very dimwitted audience. “After you so rudely canceled on me and then left the Floo without a word of explanation, I had to check where you were going.”

“Because?” Blaise asked, his tone more amused than annoyed.

“Just in case you’d gotten yourself into trouble.” Draco felt himself floundering as Blaise lifted an eyebrow in response. “Or,” Draco warmed to his subject, “if you’d gone and got yourself a girlfriend. You have appalling taste in women, and, as your best friend, it is my duty to look out for your general well-being.”

Blaise raised the other eyebrow. “I have appalling taste in women? Says the wizard who dated Pansy Parkinson.”

“I was young and decidedly more foolish.”

“Age, Malfoy, doesn’t always bring wisdom.” Blaise peered right and left in a manner which was surreptitious at best and downright creepy at worst. “I’m going to need you to leave now.” He pulled a silky piece of fabric out of his pocket. With a motion or two of his wand, the top of Blaise’s head and eyes were masked in black, revealing only two hazel eyes that glittered with excitement and his cleft jaw. It only emphasised Blaise’s grin, which was filled with anticipation. 

Draco frowned at his friend’s action and the mask itself. He wasn’t completely sure, but it seemed as though the small strip of fabric was imbued with an actual masking charm because it obscured more than just Blaise’s face. If Draco didn’t look closely, he would have sworn that the man standing before him was a regular chap with a square chin. Blink again, and masked Blaise reappeared.

I’m not bloody leaving now," Draco said, sharply watching Blaise's every move. He hadn't released his grip on Blaise's coat either. Was it his imagination or had Blaise doused himself rather liberally with his very coveted cologne made from red panda musk? He purposefully sniffed. “And you stink.”

Blaise seemed to be pressed for time, since he chose to ignore that insult as he straightened his lapels and shirt collar. "You are not coming with me. I found this place, and I'm keeping it to myself."

All of a sudden, Draco was even more determined to follow his friend in. "Well, I guess I’ll go on my merry way then.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Not even the mask could disguise Blaise’s shock.

Draco smirked at his expression. "Of course I’m coming with you. When have I ever been thwarted just like that? On top of everything, you're being so mysterious that I shall definitely need to see this place for myself."

"I could obliviate you," Blaise muttered under his breath.

"Do that. Please know that I do keep a diary, as well as a copy of my memories before I go out every day."

"Paranoid bastard," was Blaise's almost inaudible reply before he sighed, cursing slightly under his breath. "Fine. Just—here." He waved his wand and Draco found his face draped with a soft cloth and something tickling the nape of his neck.

Draco touched his face and looked around for a mirrored surface to check himself out but had to make do with Blaise’s resigned words. "You'll be recognised for certain if you enter with that hair of yours and then I'll be recognised. Anyway. Just keep your comments to a minimum and we'll be fine. If you get me kicked out of here, I will end you. Do you understand? Do not mess with me here." Blaise jabbed a pointy finger in Draco's chest.

Draco knocked Blaise's hand away and adjusted his lapels before carelessly nodding his acquiescence. The bottom half of him wasn't nearly as nonchalant as he bounced slightly on the balls of his feet with impatience. He didn’t know what he had expected, but he was now absolutely certain that exceptional gambling awaited him. What other reason was there for Blaise cancelling three times in a single week?

Blaise stuck his wand into a hole in the door as Draco watched with narrowed eyes. The hole shone with bright green light as Blaise's wand was recognised, and then there was the tell-tale sound of locks unlatching. The door fell open an inch, and Blaise moved quickly to grip the edge before pulling his wand out and stowing it away.

Blaise flashed Draco another warning look—which Draco ignored—and then they stepped through.

The room in front of them was a very unassuming place with fairly low ceilings and dim lighting. It was nothing more than a squarish area that acted as a receptacle to a doorway that opened up into a long corridor. Draco wasn't impressed. Compared to the Lisboa, this place was rather shabby. He was tempted to go back to his tracks for the evening. It was just that it hadn't been as fun without company lately, and then there was Blaise's uncharacteristic anticipation for what was to come.

Draco scrutinised his friend's back as they walked through the corridor in silence. There was an air of heightened excitement from Blaise, and he was fairly straining forward. It had Draco wondering just what was so exciting about this place. The only thing he knew Blaise really enjoyed was—

He grabbed Blaise by the back of his robes and yanked him backwards. "Is this place what I think it is? Did you bring me to another one of your questionable sex parlors?"

Someone brushed past them in the corridor. "It's mixed tonight, boys. The all-male crowd is on Mondays and Thursdays."

Draco froze, but the woman in black robes didn't spare them another glance as she continued down the hallway.

Blaise shook himself free of Draco's grip. " Brought you? As if I could have prevented you from tagging along." He sounded disgruntled. "Now, come on . You're going to make me late."

Then Blaise was off, and Draco had to speed up to keep up.

Draco had been to sex parlors with Blaise a few times, and it wasn't his thing at all. All of them had been more luxurious than this place, decorated with a plethora of candles and billowy scented curtains. One had an enchanted room to make it seem like the guests had stepped in out of the London snowstorm onto a tropical island. There were a host of women who approached them to offer them drinks on a tray, with sinuous bodies draped artfully with transparent gauze of all colours. They had all been on display, but the half-naked bodies was natural in the context of the enchanted setting. Incense had billowed through the room, enveloping the guests in a hazy mist of fragrance--and possibly illusory or enhancing charms.

Blaise had seemed to know everyone, which—well, that made Draco shudder at the implications. He didn't fancy sticking any part of his body anywhere that had previously been entered by Blaise.

Further, it didn't help his distaste to find that the places Blaise liked to frequent employed mostly orphaned Squibs, who didn't know how to cross over into the Muggle world. Or maybe they had, and this was the place they felt most at home.

Whatever his complaints, that place had had an aura of luxury of well-maintained wards at the very least. Even if it struck him as wrong to have amorous encounters tinged with such a professional and slightly tawdry air.

This place, thought Draco as they passed into another room. It was large, but nevertheless looked like an interim lecture hall and felt distinctly improvised. It’d be just like Blaise, though, to have enrolled himself into some sort of class to better himself at the only hobby he seemed to have a fondness for.

There was a wide open space in the center of the room, cordoned off with velvet ropes, possibly to give the room a sense of luxury. They failed utterly. There were chairs placed against the sides of the room, and two walls were completely covered with floor to ceiling mirrors, in the way of dueling rooms.

As Draco stood there taking in the room, trying to act as though he knew exactly what was about to occur, Blaise had gone off to one side of the mirrored walls, where other men were gathered. Draco sauntered after him as nonchalantly as he could.

“--schedule tonight?”

“You’re in luck, Black Mamba,” said a short, squat man wearing the same eye mask that covered up half of his face as everyone else. He was built like a bulldog and appeared equally pugnacious. “You’re paired off with Medusa herself.”

Draco no longer thought it was a sex club. Black Mamba and—Medusa—well… It seemed more like some sort of underground dueling association, although the area for what was likely the arena could have been larger. Draco raised his eyebrows and waited for Blaise to respond.

Surprisingly, he didn’t seem put off by his fate. “Medusa, eh? Don’t mind telling you chaps that I rather fancy another go at her.”

“She’s undefeated.” This time, a man with pale, freckly skin under his dirty-blond beard spoke.

“It’s not that she’s undefeated that’s got everyone roused, mate.” The bulldog unlatched the snap of his robes to reveal a short, powerful build squeezed into black trews and a white shirt. He continued to disrobe further, disquieting Draco mightily. Soon, he was down to only his pants and stretching himself in all directions. His muscles rippled as he tried to pull his arms all the way around him, but could only make it part of the distance, given how bulky the sides of his chest were. “It’s the fact that she won’t have a go at any of us after.”

Blaise was grinning under his mask. “Perhaps she just doesn’t fancy you, Baldie.”

The bulldog scowled. “It’s Baldasarre .”

“I think I rather like my chances,” Blaise said, turning to admire himself in the mirror. He undid his robes and negligently handed them off in Draco’s direction. Draco stepped backwards instead of reaching for them. The robes fell to the ground, and Blaise glared at Draco in the mirror. Draco shrugged, using his wand to levitate Blaise’s robes to a nearby chair. He didn’t bother to charm them folded.

Then Draco watched with jaw slightly agape as Blaise also undressed down to his skivvies.

All the men did, including the blond man whose mask didn't cover the top of his head, apparently called Leo, and another tall, well-built man with a light brown scruff named Curaidh.

Draco stepped backwards warily to avoid being struck in the face by all the disrobing.

Extreme gambling or dilapidated orgy parlor? Draco was at a complete loss as to what was happening here.

The only thing he did know was that he did not enjoy being surrounded by undressing men. Just why were they all disrobing at the same time? He was so perturbed by this mystery that he almost missed what was happening across the room until he looked up to see three women in various states of undress.

First, there was a dark-skinned woman wearing nothing but a brassiere and skimpy knickers. She kept tossing her long, straight black hair over her shoulders, and didn’t seem bothered by the fact that her breasts were very nearly exposed by her motions. His mother would have called her “big-boned,” which Draco thought an extreme euphemism. On the other hand, she was possessed of a giant set of tits and a large arse that some men undoubtedly thought attractive.

There was a tall, slender woman with her hair tied up in a long, blond ponytail. She was wearing a white bra that seemed more decorous than the stringy bit that the dark-skinned woman wore, and her bottoms also covered more of her body.

The final girl was average in height with short hair styled in a spikey sort of way and dyed a platinum colour with black tips. She kept flinging her neck from side to side in a manner that Draco rather thought would cause her to suffer severe whiplash.

“That’s the Cockatoo,” said Blaise directly into Draco's ear.

Draco glanced sideways, then skirted quickly away when he saw that Blaise was wearing nothing but his pants. “My dear fellow, what have we said about unmentionables etiquette? Kindly keep your distance.”

Blaise rolled his eyes, a motion that was all the more exaggerated with the mask covering half his face.

Draco narrowed his eyes at Blaise. “You know, you’re not nearly as incognito as you might think. I’d wager some of these people know exactly who you really are.”

Blaise shrugged indifferently. “The anonymity spell on the mask only works if you don’t recognise the person underneath. I’m not bothered by it. I’m a good-looking guy. I want to give the girls something to see.” He preened a little, and Draco fought to keep his dinner down.

“FIVE MINUTES REMAINING,” boomed a stentorian voice through the use of an Amplifying Charm that caused Draco to jump.

He looked about warily, fingering the wand in his pocket. “What really is happening here? Surely, you don’t need to undress to duel.” He hated the way his voice rose uncertainly at the end of his sentence. He didn’t much like surprises.

Around twenty people had gathered around the room, some standing about, others filling the handful of seats provided. Draco tried to infer which one of them would prove to be the most difficult opponent if he were suddenly set upon.

“Ah, I would tell you, but I really think I should just let you discover that for yourself.” Blaise’s white teeth flashed for a moment. “It’s far more amusing that way.”

Draco folded his arms and tapped his fingers impatiently. “Well, and just which one’s Medusa? Isn’t that your opponent tonight?”

“She’s not here yet,” Blaise replied, absently watching the rest of the room.

“ONE MINUTE,” the voice boomed.

“Perhaps she won’t be here and we can leave early to make the--”

“TEN. NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN--”

A figure launched itself through the door. At the sound of THREE, TWO, ONE, the door’s outline glowed and sealed itself with an audible crackling sound. Then the door completely disappeared from the wall.

Blaise grinned at Draco.

Draco didn’t return his smile. 

He would have been more concerned by the door’s disappearance had he not been completely distracted by the last figure to enter the room. She was a small woman, completely dwarfed by her robes and a mane of bushy, untameable brown hair that was almost immediately charmed into multiple braids by its owner. The effect from afar looked a bit like the mythical snakes of--

“Medusa,” Blaise said into Draco’s ear again.

Draco grimaced and clapped a hand over his ear. “My one rule is that you maintain your distance as you're getting ready to stick it into your unfortunate victim."

“Apologies, dear friend.” Blaise clapped Draco twice on his back, hard enough to make him jump. Draco pulled out his wand and pointed it in warning at Blaise, who held up both hands in mock surrender.

Blaise moved away when someone approached him to speak, and Draco turned his attention to Medusa. Before it had been charmed, for a split second, her hair had reminded him of someone else he used to know. Brown, bushy, completely out of control hair--it couldn’t be Hermione Granger, could it?

Draco could not imagine for a second that someone as uptight as Hermione Granger would deign to visit a place such as this. She had been completely uppity when he had known her, her nose always in the air whenever he passed within a foot of her as though he were the one beneath notice and not the other way round. She had never given him the time of day even on the rare occasion that he did speak to her, except to roll her eyes and give a great big condescending sniff before she would toss her big hair and walk away.

It had always been like being thrown a gauntlet and not being able to pick it up. Either she was surrounded with a constant sentinel of blithering idiots, or Draco had always been left with a nagging itch that he could not even reach to scratch. It had been that infuriating. He would have never admitted it to anyone, but quite honestly, if the chance ever came to fuck her thoroughly, he would grab her with both hands.

He watched as Medusa hurriedly dropped her bag in her corner while stretching out her muscles. Like Cockatoo, she also stretched her neck on each side and managed to extend her arms over her ears and lean at right angles at both sides before dropping her robes altogether.

Draco’s mouth grew dry.

No, it couldn’t be Hermione Granger. Not this woman who was lean and curved in all the right places. This woman had a small waist—completely uncovered now—so that he could see the tiny dip of her navel. Her legs were not as long as the other girls, but they were straight and slim. Her breasts might not have been as fulsome as the dark-haired woman called Leda, but they were taut and firm and high. Most enticing of all, Draco could see the pucker of her nipples through her top.

Medusa wasn’t standing around posing and grinning. Instead her mouth was perfectly neutral, and her eyes stared off into space as she finished her stretches.

He supposed he understood why Blaise was so stimulated by all this. All things sexual were Blaise’s game, with nary a thought for selectivity. The immediate state of undress by all the participants was right up Blaise’s alley, the horny bugger. Draco had heard of strip dueling and in fact had indulged in the game when mashed. But this--he had no idea what kind of dueling required all the participants to be in such a state of undress prior to dueling. Underwater dueling, perhaps? He gazed around surreptitiously but there was no water in sight.

“ARE WE READY!” came the loudspeaker voice again, only this time the woman, someone wearing the short shift of ancient Spartan fashion walked forward, a wand at her throat. A thunder of lusty cheers met her greeting.

The third wall rippled, and a large canvas unrolled itself from the ceiling. As Draco watched, words began to appear on the fabric, and then a chart formed. Eight names began to ripple inside the boxes, rearranging themselves to align with the correct partners. Medusa versus Black Mamba was the second pairing.

“RULES!

“TWO TEN-MINUTE ROUNDS TO A MATCH! Participants begin in swimwear, and if the garments haven’t been taken off by halftime, they shall be fully nude for the second.

“A five-second pin is worth two points. Submission is worth five points. Forced orgasm is worth fifteen points. Most important of all, the winner gets to FUCK the loser any way they want! The only form of charmwork allowed are WANDLESS spells designed to defend yourself from a pin, and only ONE IS permitted in total per match. They also cost you a point a piece.

“ARE WE IN AGREEMENT!”

There was a hearty chorus of “ayes” and cheers before the first grouping went into the ring.

Draco pulled himself together and went to confront Blaise. Blaise was, naturally, in the midst of adjusting the sizable bulge under his shorts. Draco determinedly fixed his eyes on Blaise's face. “Did I hear what I just heard? They had me until forced orgasm. Fuck the loser? ” What exactly was Blaise mixed up in?

If Blaise hadn’t been topless, Draco would have liked to grab him by his lapels to shake him heartily.

Blaise adjusted his mask and licked his lips. Draco shuddered and tried not to speculate about where that tongue would be later tonight. “That’s right. This is a sex fighting league. Totally off the books.”

Draco was having a hard time trying to wrap his mind around the concept. His attention darted from the couple wrestling inside the ring to the woman named Medusa at the side of the room. Unlike the other participants, she didn’t seem to be egging the two on. She stood biting her thumb, shifting from one leg to the other, for all the world as though she were preparing for a speech, not to be in the center of attention in a sex fight.

A sex fight.

Sex fight.

Draco’s brain seemed to be running in a loop.

The two fighting in the ring were the buxom dark-skinned woman and Baldie. One minute in, Leda had pulled her own brassiere off up over her head and flung it into the crowd. She then crouched down, her hands out in front of her like claws, and feinted, right before she jumped onto Baldie. Her breasts swung wildly before she buried Baldie’s face with them. The two of them grappled like that for a moment, Baldie manfully remaining upright under the onslaught of the much larger woman.

Except for Leda’s toplessness, the whole thing still seemed relatively-- modest , thought Draco, still unable to come to terms with it all. Then, Leda’s hand reached down to grab Baldie through his shorts and massaged him quickly so that he soon became visibly hard. A bead of wetness showed through the fabric of his pants.

Draco’s eyebrows rose as Baldie threw Leda off before leaping on top of her, upside down so that his face was enveloped between her legs. There, in front of all the cheering onlookers, Baldie grabbed the crotch of Leda’s knickers, quickly jerking them to the side before tonguing her.

He managed one lick before he was kneed off and flipped over Leda's shoulder.

Next to Draco, Blaise was clapping and hooting.

Draco rubbed a hand over the bottom half of his face in his incredulity at it all. His heart was pounding like it never had at the racetracks. Sex turned sport. It was even more salacious when the pairing was decided not by choice but by random selection.

He wasn't immune to the insanity either, although the current pair was doing nothing for him.

Baldasarre was a funny looking man, and the fact that their sizes were so disproportionate, with Leda towering him by a head. Leda was someone that the majority of the population would consider attractive, with a flouncy air to go with those enormous breasts and heavy, rounded buttocks. She just wasn’t his type.

He snuck a peek across the room at Medusa. She wasn’t cheering but was shifting restlessly from leg to leg, as if anticipating her turn in the ring.

Draco felt a twitch in his pants at the mere sight of her dressed so scantily that it was an easy thing to imagine her completely naked. Which she would be before long.

The thought made him rock hard.

But no, he really shouldn’t stay. He had enough vices to keep him busy for the rest of his life. “I’m heading out,” he yelled to Blaise over the roar of the crowd.

“You can’t!” Blaise shouted back without looking at him. “Door’s sealed until half-time!”

Well, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New betas for this first chapter: stargazing121, who helped Britpick and reword some of the conversation; the awesome Jamethiel, who isn't impressed with anything less than perfection (this didn't cut it for her).
> 
> Alphas who helped talk me through the plot/notplot: thelastlynx, who did double duty in betawork; kahcicamera, who's a sweetheart, and the lovely disenchantedglow. 
> 
> Needless to say, a lot of people helped go through this trash so you wouldn't have to.


	2. Chapter 2

The first match ended halfway through the second round, with Leda and Baldie fucking each other senseless in the ring; Leda’s legs up in the air around Baldie’s head while he levered in and out of her to the accompaniment of his grunting and her moaning. A few people remained at the outskirts to cheer them on. Some of the other people at the edges of the ring were rubbing against each other or touching themselves casually. Draco hurriedly looked away when a few women seemed to be holding his eyes. In this pit of female domination, he didn’t want to be caught by anyone. Traditionally, he preferred having the right of choice.

He wandered off to the refreshment table, where there was a poor selection of crisps and crackers and a very abysmal aubergine juice. No alcohol, disappointingly. He wondered at Blaise’s tenacity at staying here when he had the choice of more lavish brothels, but then his mind flickered back to Medusa. He glanced at her covertly over his shoulder.

Draco should have been repelled. He generally despised sharing things, and knowing a woman's sexual history was akin to having each of her former partners look over their shoulders while they did the deed.

Because of that, he should have not felt such draw to Medusa. By her very appearance here, she was a regular participant in the bawdy and risque game of sex fighting. What a hobby. Above all else, Draco expected discretion from his women. A tad fussy, yes, perhaps, but he had a thing about handling public property. 

Draco poured himself a measure of aubergine juice and sipped it with a grimace as the couple cleared off and the ring was Scourgified of all sweat and other bodily juices.

“I’m next,” Blaise said with a grin. He swiped the glass out of Draco’s hand and tossed its contents back in one gulp.

Draco grimaced again, casting a cleaning spell on himself where the drink had splashed on his lapel. “With Medusa?”

“She’s not my favorite, truth be told. Chunnel’s my favorite, but she’s not here tonight.”

“Chunnel.”

“The English Channel. She’s an English rose, every tunnel in her.” Blaise smirked and adjusted himself again. “But Medusa, now. Nobody’s breached her walls yet. I’ve only been a member for a month, but she’s been here for four. She’s undefeated.”

“Ah. So, what happens when she wins?”

“She makes them eat her out. She’s got a sweet-tasting cunt, except it takes her forever to come. Probably the reason she’s never lost.”

Draco was all ears. This information was making him feel hot and bothered. “She’s never lost? How’s that possible? She’s tiny.” Another glance at the opposite side of the room ascertained the fact that Medusa was the smallest of all the female contenders tonight. Physical awareness of that notion was making all the hairs on Draco's body stand up.

“That’s why the lads are a little worked up. They think she’s cheating. Even so, I think Leo wants to be buggered by her.”

“How would she do that?” Draco asked, intrigued despite himself. “With her finger?”

Blaise chuckled. “I’ve forgotten how utterly vanilla you are. No, dear boy, with a strap-on. They put it on over their—ah, see there? Cockatoo’s got one. Cocky little thing that she is.”

Draco’s eyes swept over the crowd until he found the blond mohawk with the black tips. Cockatoo’s undergarments weren’t much of one from the back, being only two pieces of string much in the way of a dead-end intersection, but what was disturbing was what stuck out the front—something black and protuberant with a mushroom head. It was a dildo—that much Draco did know from his forays with Blaise into the sex parlors. Cockatoo was idly rubbing it as she chatted with her companions, casually as anything.

“Fucked is fucked,” said Blaise with a nonchalant shrug when Draco remained speechless. “I’m on. Wish me luck.”

Draco didn’t say anything as Blaise ducked under the velvet ropes onto the mat.

Medusa had oiled herself all over, and she looked at Blaise with a fierce glint in her eyes. Blaise grinned back at her and blew her a kiss, to which she responded with a narrowing of her eyes.

Brown eyes. That much Draco could see from the distance.

She only came up to Blaise’s shoulder. How could she manage to pin Blaise? 

It was just a lookalike, that was all. Some side-effect of the masking charm was meddling with his ability to see her impartially. He was projecting an image onto her. Why that image would be Hermione Granger, Draco had no bloody idea. Only the idea refused to leave him.

He watched with bated breath and paid far more attention than he had the previous match. At one point, he was standing so close that when she had Blaise in a chokehold on the floor, Draco caught her eye. For one moment, he froze as he stared across and met Medusa’s dark eyes. She was distracted for a few seconds and Blaise used that moment to grab at her breast.

Her top slipped and her breasts were exposed. Draco stopped breathing as he looked at her firm breasts. They were on the smaller side and delectably shaped, a perfect mouthful with only the slightest hint of jiggle, topped with small dark areolas and protrusive button nipples. He couldn’t take his eyes off the way her nipples tightened with exposure to the cold air.

Draco’s mind was a complete and utter slate of blankness. Something was vaguely roaring in his ears.

There was outraged surprise on Medusa’s face when she fell backwards onto the mat with Blaise above her. Blaise covered one of her nipples with his mouth. Draco's trousers felt much too tight. In fact, all of his clothes, not just his trousers, felt much too restrictive. He wanted—he wanted...

“TWO POINTS TO BLACK MAMBA!”

Medusa growled and swung her legs up and around Blaise’s torso. In a few moves, she had Blaise’s head in a chokehold between her legs and one of his arms pinned behind his back with the crook of her foot. Blaise could really have broken free—in fact, the logical part of Draco’s brain could not understand how he wasn’t able to break free. In a fight of strength, there should be no contest at all. 

It hit him like a slap across his dunce cap—Blaise wasn’t fighting because he liked being exactly where he was. The little bugger.

“TWO POINTS TO MEDUSA!"

Blaise managed to twist himself around so now he was lying face down in Medusa’s lap. He had one hand up one side of her knickers and was trying to pull them down. 

Medusa reached down and pinched Blaise’s nipple. Draco felt the sensation as if it had been him in the ring. Blaise had been hard from the start, but now he was crowning his shorts. In another twisty motion, Medusa dropped Blaise’s head down to the floor to roll off to the side. Then she straddled Blaise, who yelled out, “FUCK!” in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the room.

“Fuck him up, Medusa!” someone yelled.

She was about to. She had reached behind her buttocks to pull Blaise’s cock from his shorts and his dark length nestled against her backside as she stroked it from bottom to tip in one sensuous, slow motion.

Draco’s own cock was tingling. He felt every single touch as vividly as if  _ he  _ were in the ring.

Blaise groaned and bucked once, but did not throw Medusa off. One of his hands came up to fondle Medusa’s firm breast, his thumb stroking over her hard nipple. He attempted to sit up, but Medusa swung one leg up over his face so that her knee and calf were directly pressing against his sternum.

Across the distance, Draco could see Medusa’s mouth form the words no no no in a mock scolding manner. She leaned down and licked Blaise’s nipple in a move much like a ballerina stretching out her hamstring. Blaise gave a tortured yell and—

“TIME!”

Medusa instantly launched herself upright and off Blaise, who lay there for a moment, spread-eagled, his cock standing straight up over the top of his pants, which were pulled halfway down his buttocks.

Eventually, Blaise rolled to a crouch and then pulled himself up to come over to where Draco stood. At Blaise’s approach, Draco suddenly realised how close he had come to the arena, with his hands somehow gripping the ropes when he had thought he was standing a distance away.

Draco uncurled his fist and backed away from Blaise. “Point that somewhere else.”

“Sorry,” Blaise said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. He attempted to stuff himself back into his pants, although the thin fabric did nothing to disguise his erection. “Goddamn. Did you see, Draco? The woman’s a menace.”

“I didn’t see you attempting to throw her off.”

Blaise grinned. “Well. It’s only chivalrous to offer a lady a seat atop the Black Mamba.”

“READY!”

Blaise sauntered off to the middle of the ring, leisurely stripping off his shorts to reveal his swinging erect cock. Medusa ducked under the ropes and her gaze slowly traveled from his member back to his idiotic grin. She tossed her braided hair over her shoulders in a show of nonchalance that—

Draco had seen that motion only about a million times before. 

It shouldn’t have been the only thing that marked her as Hermione Granger, but somehow it was her defining movement. It was as though another puzzle piece clicked into place for Draco, another notch on the list that matched up Medusa against Hermione Granger.

He watched with a dry mouth as Medusa pulled her top completely off and over her head, holding his breath as the brassiere shifted the eye mask but didn’t dislodge it, due to a sticking charm, no doubt. Then she slowly bent over to pull off her shorts.

If Draco had been trying to deny his own arousal, it was now gone too far to do so now. At the sight of Medusa’s bared pubis, Draco wanted to reach into his own pants and wank himself to oblivion. He could just about envision himself nestled there, against her shaved cunt. God, how warm and wet it would feel. He’d be able to rub himself there, maybe stroke a finger or two inside her. He could almost feel the pebbling of her nipple against his chest. Her breast would fit inside his mouth like a warm bite of—

“POINT TO MEDUSA!”

Draco pulled himself out of his reverie with difficulty. In front of him, the same spectacle unfolded: Blaise was caught in a chokehold between Medusa’s legs. Blaise had turned his nose sideways and attempted to lick her core, but she shot out from under him and grabbed his cock again. Truthfully, it was a fairly impressive looking organ and it was a large enough handle for Medusa to pull around. She squeezed it until Blaise’s breath visibly hitched before she flipped and flopped on top of Blaise again, this time on top of his throat, with enough force that his chest concaved for a moment. She pulled both of his arms up over his head, crossing them over one another at the forearms before tucking her knees under outside of his elbows so that Blaise was completely immobilised.

She stared down at her opponent, her centre pressed up under his jaw. Draco could almost feel the heat of her juices on him as though it were him in the ring.

Blaise’s legs jerked up once, twice before he lay still, submitting under her hold. Gradually, his face started to turn color. The room was stock-still. 

Then Blaise raised one hand weakly off the mat.

“FORCED SUBMISSION, FIVE POINTS TO MEDUSA! TIME!”

Medusa got up, held a hand down to Blaise and let him up, but only to his knees. She hitched a knee over his shoulder and adjusted herself so that her core was right in front of his mouth. 

There was a flash of white teeth as Blaise grinned and his hands came around to grab ahold of Medusa’s round buttocks, pulling her in and closing his mouth right over her core. 

Draco watched as Blaise’s tongue flicked out and Medusa’s head fell backwards under the sensual onslaught to her loins. He found himself breathing harder with every stroke of the tongue, with every moan, and as her knuckles got whiter and whiter on Blaise’s hair with her tightening grip. 

In the past, whenever Blaise had extolled the taste of a perfectly shaved cunt, Draco had always manage to wince his way around the conversation. He had never seen the point of applying himself there. Part of him thought the action demeaning, if not outright disgusting.

But now, at the out of control ecstasy on her face, he realised exactly why Blaise had recommended it. Possibly, he wouldn’t mind tonguing her on her glistening slit, just to see if she tasted as good as Blaise said she did. 

This is how she looks when she comes, he thought. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Draco felt full to bursting. Every other sound in the room was dimmed to his ears. For the moment, it was just him and her in the entire room. Even Blaise had disappeared from his vision. In time to his thundering pulse, he was imagining himself as the one to induce that expression on her face.

It should be him up there with her, not Blaise, was the very clear thought in his head.

* * *

“Well, what did you think?”

“Just that you’re a cheap prick to be coming here just for the free sex,” Draco replied promptly. He tried to ignore Blaise swiping a hand over his mouth.

Blaise snorted before casting a cleaning spell over himself. “I pay a membership fee.”

“How often does—Medusa come?”

“Only the once today,” Blaise said with a smirk that Draco longed to wipe off his mouth with a hex. His own erection throbbed but, with every word out of Blaise, began to recede.

“I meant to these meetings.”

Blaise grinned deviously. “Only on Fridays.”

It started to become crystal clear why Blaise had been busy every single Friday this month. “It’s strange that these women wouldn’t be in relationships. A Friday. You’d think they had boyfriends or something.”

“Who’s to say they don’t?” Blaise shrugged as though the state of the participants’ relationship status didn’t matter to him. “It’s a sport.”

Wasn’t Hermione Granger seeing someone right now? She always seemed to be in a relationship with someone; at every single point of his life, she had been accompanied by some male admirer or another.

If that even was Hermione Granger. In the coolness of the aftermath, his rational side was decrying her identity as an impossibility.

His expression must have betrayed his stupefaction because Blaise smirked and gave him such a hard slap on the back that he almost stumbled. “Did you enjoy the show at least?” 

“I want to come again next Friday.”

“You can’t,” Blaise said, pulling on his robes. “You’re not a member. I was asked tonight who you were, and I said a guest. Problem is, I’m only allowed to bring one guest per time and just that one time. No repeats. They’re not running a peep show here, after all.”

Draco gritted his teeth and looked around. Medusa had disappeared. He hadn’t even had a chance to speak to her, to find out if she really was Hermione Granger. But then, what would he have said? He was in disguise himself. The charm Blaise placed on Draco had darkened his hair to a fairly nondescript brown and with the mask on, he was almost unrecognizable except for his chin.

“How do I become a member?”

Blaise paused in his step and peered at him narrowly. “You? A member?” He stifled a laugh. “Oh, come now. You can’t possibly be interested in becoming a member. You’re so finicky with your partners that you’re almost a monk. Aside from that when was the last time you got off your arse and worked up a sweat? No innuendo intended. I meant, other than your precious Quidditch.”

“I exercise,” Draco said, a bit defensively. 

“You’d be pinned in a second,” Blaise said dismissively. “Did you see the chin grab scissor chokehold she had on me there? She spun it out in such quick succession that it’s easily missed.”

“I saw,” Draco said, although he hadn’t known there were actual names for any of the movements of this bizarre sport. All he had been fixated on had been Medusa’s small hand on his—er, Blaise’s cock. “I mean, this is sex fighting. Isn’t the goal of it all to get fucked?” 

If so, sign him up.

Blaise made a sound that was kind of like a _pfft_. “Now you’re just looking down on all of us.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Draco had the most vivid sex dreams that night. 

Someone wearing an eye mask called his name. Those red lips formed the words Draco before kissing their way down his abdomen and closing with deliberate slowness over his aching cock.

"How's that?" she said, somehow talking to him and taking him deep into her mouth at the same time. Her hair was loose, a wild mane of fuzzy dark brown curls that glinted in the candlelight. "Or would you rather put it in my tunnel?"

"But I haven't pinned you yet," Draco found himself saying. He reached down to pick up one of her curls, but it lay out of reach of his hand.

Hermione Granger looked up at him, the eye mask gone. "And you never will." 

She was now stroking a large black dildo that she licked from stem to tip and he felt every sensation as clearly as though it were his cock. It wasn't. It was Blaise’s and he was fucking Hermione Granger from behind so hard that Draco could hear the slapping of flesh against flesh. She stared straight across the distance at Draco and licked her red lips. "Draco. Draco. Master Draco."

Draco felt a need so intense he wanted to shout out. His heart was pounding out of his chest. His rod was throbbing and he was so close. With half-closed eyes, he watched as she reached up to squeeze her own breast.

"Gahhhh," said Draco just before he woke up. His hand was on his cock under the covers and he was so hard he could pound nails.

"Master Draco? Master Draco?"

Draco almost jumped five feet into the air. At the very least, he lost his grip on his erection or the desire to continue when he saw his house-elf standing next to the bed, its tiny face only a little above bed-level.

"Was you needing me, Master Draco? Needing me? I heard you yelling my name. My name."

Among one of the more irritating habits of his elf was his tendency to repeat the last words of whatever sentence he had been saying.

"I didn't call for you, Pinny. Go back to your quarters," Draco said hoarsely through very dry lips. He quickly made sure his covers were securely over his entire nether region. His cock twitched, reminding him that he had just had a very lurid dream and it was not yet satisfied.

"But you were yelling my name. My name," the house-elf said, undeterred. Its batlike ears flapped in its confusion.

Draco realised just then what had happened. Pinny. Pin me. Of course. Incredibly horrifying, but now completely understandable. He cleared his throat. "Fetch me a pitcher of lemonade."

"Lemonade, lemonade," Pinny chorused under his breath, as though to remind himself what Draco's request was. "Right away. Right away."

Draco waited without moving as Pinny conjured up a tray containing a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade with fresh lemon slices floating around, a chilled glass, and a monogrammed napkin. There was even a bottle of his favourite evening liqueur next to it. Pinny knew him so well. He managed to thank the house-elf before it disappeared under orders to not bother him again even if he happened to think he heard Draco yelling for him that evening.

He lay there on the bed for a moment, thinking of the events of the evening before. Hermione Granger and Medusa seemed to blend together even more in the stillness of the night, especially after his dreams just now.

They were such vivid dreams, too. Filled with such intense detail that he could have sworn Granger/Medusa had been right there on top of him, licking him from base to tip. It had been a good long while since he'd last fantasised about Granger, and none of them had ever featured her being so wild and simultaneously in control. In the secret recesses of his head, he had always put her in some sort of subservient role.

Yet Draco had never been so turned on before. He hated sharing his toys and women were no exception. He shouldn't have been lusting for someone that was involved in something so shady, but now he was harder than he had been before his elf's interruption.

That absolutely did it. Draco threw off the covers and stroked himself; as he imagined that perfectly formed body and rounded breasts and arse cheeks, his hands flew over his steel-hard cock. His orgasm flooded his body like a breaking dam, overwhelming him until he had spilled all over his sheets, leaving them utterly soaked. He stopped to clean up, drank deeply from one entire glass in one breath, and then sank down into his bed again, determined to forget every bizarre thing that had happened tonight.

Draco resolutely shut his eyes.

The image of Medusa’s perfect body and her tempting red mouth refused to leave his mind. Draco’s cock twitched in response as though it had not just been thoroughly exercised. 

Dammit.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hermione does not have sex with Draco.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the first two chapters were scrupulously beta'd and nitpicked by a whole group of sexperts, including Jamethiel and Stargazing121, from here on out, these will be loosely unedited. It's just not that sort of highbrow fic.

It was a good thing that the following week was the Founders’ Annual Charity Drive. Although the Founders and all their progeny had long since passed to the netherworld, their legacy of silent auctions lived on in yearly tradition.

It was a good thing for multiple reasons, all of which were important to Draco, who didn't do anything that didn't benefit him in manifold ways.

First, it was always good to know who were the current movers and shakers in town, and Draco liked to play a little game by himself based on how important the speaker was by how bad his speech was.

The second reason was that Draco couldn’t resist a chance at some light gambling. A silent auction was especially titillating because he could circulate the tables with a sneer—since everyone knew that the Malfoys had something better than whatever was being donated—and entertain himself by betting on who would win what item. If he got five right, Draco later awarded himself by opening up a vintage bottle from the Malfoy cellars. Just a bottle of the better stuff, the kind guaranteed for a really good time but not as prized as something containing fermented verdigris, or blood vomit from a unicorn. That was kept locked up in the super secret vault that Draco couldn't even access until he reached fifty.

The third reason was that Draco, like all other Sacred Twenty-Eight members, were magically forced to attend. Back in their heyday, it had been a sign of privilege to be required to attend. Now, it felt like another annoying shackle which he had to endure.

This year, Draco had a fourth reason to attend—he wanted a chance to see Hermione Granger in action.

Usually, there was no call for their paths to cross. She was employed like a common drudge, and Draco had an eternity to spend at his leisure, picking up whatever hobby took his current fancy. Recently, to pass the time away from the casinos and his other more unsavory habits, he would meditate in the studio in his flat. According to one practitioner of air magic, Long Tan Woc, if one became really good at it, one could manipulate the air flow inside an opponent's body. So far, Draco had only managed to be very good at napping in his studio.

The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Medusa was Hermione Granger.

First of all, it really didn't seem like she needed the sex. She was in the papers almost every other week for dating someone new, not that he bothered keeping up with her love life or anything. Back in the day, Pansy had always kept him apprised of Hermione Granger's supposed love life, but Pansy had apparently gotten a life abroad. So now Draco had to make fun of Granger all by himself. It just wasn't the same. He told himself so whenever he scoffed over any mention of her newest flame.

Second, Medusa was tiny. Well, not like house-elf tiny, but definitely petite. She had barely come up to Blaise's shoulder. Draco and Blaise were of a height, so that definitely ruled Hermione Granger out. He remembered her being sizeable enough to land a punch from shoulder level with some force. Unless she had been hit with a shrinking charm that went unfixed? Highly unlikely, given how exacting she always was, with a face screwed up like a prune whenever anyone made a joke. Of course, he had grown in the ensuing years and didn’t know exactly what had become of her, physically or otherwise.

Third, Hermione Granger was a huge prude. This contradicted the first point slightly, but he had always somewhat imagined that sex with Hermione Granger would come only after signing a long list of preapproved rules and contractual terms. Everyone knew there was no having fun around Hogwarts if she were the Prefect on duty. It was a joke in his dorms that if she were made Head Girl, she would probably separate all the classes by gender. She went around mumbling, "honestly, this is the library," or "school," or wherever people happened to be snogging instead of studying. He was sure she was set to become Madame Pince's successor in keeping the library a hormone-free zone.

On the other hand, if Hermione Granger happened to be Medusa, then Draco would be more than happy to offer himself up as a chair for her pleasure.

Anyway, the point was, he had very good reasons for putting in an appearance here tonight.

Luckily, Draco didn't have to wait long before his quarry appeared practically right under his nose. He almost burst out laughing when he laid eyes on her.

Hermione Granger was attired in what looked like an oversized outer robe—the kind that men favored, with padding on the shoulders and two rows of buttons down the front. The cape covered all of the back and most of the front as well. It was oversized, with the shoulder flaps sticking far out on either side of her, and hung to her feet, only revealing her toes. The sleeves also extended half a foot past her fingertips.

"Nice outfit, Granger," he said, forcing his lips into a neutral, deadpan expression. "You look like you're taking gender neutrality to a new level."

"Shut up, Malfoy," Hermione said. She looked blisteringly angry, but with the way she kept scowling towards her group of friends, somehow Draco didn't think her vitriol was aimed at him.

"What's the matter? Did you raid Ron's closet for that garb?" He took a sip of his drink and eyed the motley group of Gryffindors chattering across the ballroom. They were congregated next to the Founders' portrait, which was always hauled out for this occasion. Her friends seemed not to have noticed that Hermione was in a rage.

Her lips tightened. "Look, Malfoy. I'm really not in the mood. Go kick some puppies somewhere else." She then performed some quick nonverbal magic, waving her wand over herself in quick succession in a way that made him step back.

He raised his eyebrows when the heavy outer robes disappeared and revealed Hermione Granger anew.

She wore a slim-fitted dress with shimmery beads dangling off it with every movement she made; currently, some very angry, jerky brushing down of said beads. The dress was that in-between colour which his father would have called “new-fangled made-up colours,” of a mixture of silverish-beige. It had little translucent caps for straps and the whole ensemble had a silhouette similar to what the “fashion-forward” crowd favoured nowadays, according to Blaise.

There were many traditionalists who thought the style much too risque, but as far as Draco was concerned, the only thing risque about it was that her collar bones and arms were bared, and the hemline came up several inches above her knees. In the absence of anything else to ogle, he noted that her slim legs looked delectable and very toned.

“You do like to go in for a shock effect, don’t you? Under that atrocity of an outer robe, you look divine. I’m surprised you didn’t stand at the top of the stairs wearing that.”

“I _obviously_ didn’t voluntarily wear that outer robe, Malfoy,” she replied, putting more emphasis on her statement than his comment warranted. Her eyes dashed back to her friends across the room and Draco’s gaze followed. “Only some people thought I was revealing too much skin, and that Hermione Granger oughtn’t look like this.” She gestured at her current revealed state with a slash of her hand.

“If you have it, you should flaunt it,” Draco said, depositing his empty wine glass on a self-serving tray floating past. It was true. The initial impression of her dress was the glaring beaded and glittering effect, which was almost blinding. Upon a second once-over, her small waist and smooth skin did not disappoint in the least. “And—I can’t say with absolute certainty, mind, considering there are still parts of you all covered up—but what there is of you looks fabulous.”

He was leaning in when he said that. When she froze, he did too, wondering what had gotten into him. Her friends might just be right—Hermione Granger wasn’t someone who dressed in revealing clothing and sashayed her little arse all over the dance floor. He had seen her hex people with startling accuracy and more than a little venom—and that was almost ten years ago. Who knew what she was capable of now?

Before he could take proper evasive action, she threw her head back. The movement shook her hair, drawing his attention to the luscious, chocolatey curls; an improvement on her previous look of frazzled witch caught by a stray lightning bolt. She turned glittering eyes on him. Her vindicated expression indicated that he might be safe for another five minutes. “Thank you for saying that, Malfoy. As it turns out, Ronald thought only a tart would wear something like this and sealed me into his outer robes, which I was to continue to wear for the duration of the evening. Luckily, he’s always off on the timing of his spell expiration.”

Draco and Hermione looked in unison across the room where Ronald Weasley was chatting with his sister and a few other women he recognised but couldn’t name. All of them, with the exception of one dainty blonde-haired girl, were wearing various versions of racy gowns. Draco could pick out Weasley’s sister by the profusion of freckles and bright red hair. There was one other woman he thought he recognised from Hogwarts by A) the way she laughed and placed a familiar hand on Weasley’s shirt-clad chest and B) how her laughing managed to jiggle her very substantial bosom in a manner that Draco couldn’t help but think was intentional.

“She looks familiar,” Draco said, nodding his head in the bosomy girl’s direction.

“Lavender Brown.” Hermione’s tone was short and she threw back the contents of her wine glass into her mouth in one swift movement before levitating the glass away. Draco got the distinct impression that she wanted to crush the glass to pieces under her heels instead.

Her ire seemed feminine but logical now. “Ah. They’re allowed to wear revealing outfits, and you’re not.”

“Exactly. It’s not even a double standard. It’s—just directed towards me.”

Draco continued to survey Hermione with one hand in his pocket. Before she vanished the unwieldy wizarding robes, he hadn’t looked at her face at all. Now, it seemed that she had blossomed overnight. Her eyes were expertly made up and dark and soulful, and her hair was a thick mane of tamed curls falling down her back. Not for the first time did Draco wonder if she had Spanish blood. When had she gotten so pretty? She definitely hadn’t looked like this in school. “Because—you’re the swot?”

She made a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a scoff. Her rosy lips formed an annoyed pout that made him think of other things it could be doing. “It’s not just Ron. It’s all the men I know. Harry. Neville, even. The men I date.”

His eyebrows flew up. Well, this was more information than he thought he’d get tonight. And what delicious information it was, too. His mind was whirling with the implications as he suddenly recalled his mission tonight.

_Medusa_.

Tonight, Hermione Granger looked nothing like that masked goddess, Medusa. The hair was vastly different, and her current attire, though much skimpier than daily wear, skimmed over her body, hiding any perky bottoms from his view. She was definitely taller than Medusa, but that could be her exceedingly high heels. Hermione Granger was definitely pretty, but Medusa had been fierce.

It was such a leap of logic to assume that Hermione Granger would engage in sexy fisticuffs just because the men in her life were disappointing her mightily by putting her into a virginal safety box.

But was it though? Was it that far-fetched?

He nabbed another wineglass and took several much-needed sips as his imagination started to float him off on weird and sexual tangents. Aloud, he said with seeming equanimity, “Surely, they’re only affording you the proper respect any well-bred witch would desire.” Draco avoided using the term “Pureblood,” as it was a verboten phrase in polite society now, but they both knew that was what he meant.

“That’s a double standard.” Her teeth were definitely gritted now as she flashed him a particularly vulpine and unamused grin. “Why shouldn’t a witch be able to fuck a cow and eat it too?”

His jaw dropped open, but only for a moment. Draco was aware that his pulse had picked up speed, and his bits had perked up at her vulgarity. It was so deliciously strange and anatomical—definitely another side of Hermione Granger than the one he had heretofore been aware.

Maybe she could be just as fierce as Medusa.

Not that he had a thing about being dominated.

Or maybe he just never knew it before.

“Maybe...you can wrestle them for it,” he said aloud.

When she slowly turned her head to look full on him, the first thought in Draco’s head was _well, fuck_. He really had too much to drink. He didn’t know why that had just slipped out of his mouth. The second thought was that there was a glint in her eyes that was almost speculative as she cocked her head to one side and considered him.

In that moment, every last doubt that Medusa and Hermione Granger were the same person vanished from his mind. She was, and she planned to finish him off for knowing about it.

Was it wrong of him to be so turned on by the thought?

“Shall we take this outside?” she asked then, surprising him completely with her sugary sweet tone. That was not to mention the fact that she had reached out to run the tip of her middle finger up the back of his hand when he had expected another sort of touch instead.

Or maybe, just maybe, she had something else in mind...

He might just have stopped breathing entirely.

“After you,” he said with a smooth smile after he had recovered himself.

“No, we can’t be seen leaving together.”

If he had been excited before, now his temperature sky-rocketed. He shifted his position as casually as possible before leaning down to whisper, “Don’t leave me waiting too long.”

Then he adjusted his tie and strolled from the main hall.

* * *

Draco had chosen to leave the main hall through one of the doorways that led to the anterooms serving as restrooms. There were six of these corridors in the old museum, and every one of them was darker and less public than the grand double doors at the top of the stairs or the ones at the rear of the room leading out to the courtyard.

As soon as the cooler air from the hallway drifted over his skin, his mind began to clear at a rapid pace. Whether or not they were the same people—and it certainly seemed like they were from her tells—there was no guarantee that any naughtiness would ensue.

It was only because he hadn’t had a decent shag in over a month, Draco told himself. Lately, all the women he met seemed to melt together into an amalgamous unit, a cookie cutter version who did and said all the right things around a well-heeled wizard, even if he happened to come with a ton of baggage and possess questionable lifestyle habits.

In fact, that baggage—considering how well his family’s PR team and lawyers had rehabilitated his image—seemed to increase his value in stock, which was something that never failed to bemuse him. Women nodded sympathetically when the topic of his teenage misdeeds came up or clasped their bosom over his being extorted to murder on demand. It left him bewildered. What happened to all the people who had screamed out for blood to be spilled in the wake of the war? They had apparently been pacified by the increase in prosperity in recent years; fallen complacent with the economic boom.

Whatever it was, he could categorise women by their reactions to him: the single ones or the ones with young daughters; who treated him as a sad, misled boy when it was convenient for them to forget about his misdeeds in favour of his bank balance; or the We Do Not Forget group, who eyed him warily and whispered about him behind his back.

Hermione Granger had always belonged to the latter category, but now she had somehow suddenly created a new one of her own, Population: 1—the radical reformer with the secret life of a sex fighter.

Draco wouldn’t say no to any of that intrigue.

Hermione Granger had always been attractive despite her atrocious appearance in school, strangely enough. Her know-it-all tendencies meant she stood out in class, even if she didn’t seem to give a damn about the attention. That spark in her had always drawn him to notice her, maybe because of her unmasked contempt for him, or because she was deemed forbidden. Whatever the case had been, tonight she was truly stunning, completely independent of any youthful perceptions.

Draco was ruminating on the logistics of shagging it out with Hermione Granger here in this anteroom when something—his wand—flew out of his pocket. Before he could murmur a half-hearted protective incantation, he was frozen in place.

Fortunately, he remained upright, his eyes seeking for his assailant in the darkness. If he had been more lucid, perhaps he could have reacted faster, but well, hindsight was twenty-twenty and all that.

An ominous clicking sound seemed to resound through the room, signaling the locking of the door. The light came on, and Hermione Granger strolled into view, her wand held up, and his wand held loosely in her left hand.

_Well._

At a gesture from Hermione, invisible ropes wound around his frozen body, locking him in place after she removed the freezing charm. Idly, Draco registered her absolute mastery of the Finite charm. Bondage it was, then.

“Well, I can’t say as I object to being tied up by you, Granger, though a little warning would have been the polite thing to do.”

His insouciant tone made her brows draw together and she brandished her wand at him at chest level. “Warning? What do you think this is? A classroom?"

Now that she mentioned it, classroom playacting had in fact featured in one of the fantasies he had about her.

Hermione came closer, and he looked his fill at her, taking in the lines of her slim, strong arms, her upright posture, her utter confidence in herself. Watching her sauntering forward on heels with a menacing expression on her face, Draco was filled with wild elation. He could feel his cock rising to the occasion, as though magnetically drawn to her like steel filings. “When did you turn into such a goddess?” he said half to himself. His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. If only he could just touch her...

At his words, she stopped a few feet from him and surveyed him quizzically. “Are you—drunk?” she asked.

His hands were clenched into fists on either side of him, straining against the invisible ropes. Maybe it was the idea of her as Medusa merging with the real-life person that was making him crazy, but all he knew was that his brain was chanting: _Granger. Granger. Must have Granger._

He gave a laugh as he realised she was waiting for his response. “Do you know, I rather think I am.”

“They were serving watered-down wine in there. How on earth did you manage to get drunk on that?”

“To be fair, I came here a little blitzed. And maybe a little dosed as well.” He must have been both, because otherwise he would not have admitted his habit of potion misuse to her. It wasn’t illegal so much as generally unsavoury. One had a tendency to get a reputation for being off his rocker, and he tried, for the most part, to stay unnoticed. He had enough of a reputation already, given his teenage exploits.

Hermione shook her head in disgust. “You’re just a completely useless human being, aren’t you, Malfoy?”

“Does that mean we’re not going to fuck?” He hated how pathetic he sounded (almost whining) but, to be honest, he wouldn’t much care if it got him what he wanted.

She stepped forward so that their feet were toe to toe. She took a deep breath and shook back her hair a little. His eyes were fastened on the rise and fall of her bosom—much like the useless human being she accused him of. Oh, well. It was too bad her dress was so overly decorated with beading that it almost obscured any visible lines or puckering.

“What makes you think I’d waste it on you?” she asked. She looked almost amused, in a condescending, queenly sort of way.

“You wouldn’t have to fight for it otherwise, would you?”

Not the brightest thing to say, because her beautiful dark eyes narrowed at him, and the wand came up to gesticulate under his chin. He raised his eyebrows at her, daring her to deny it.

_I dare you…_

The wand prodded his chin and forced his face up. He watched her from under lowered lashes as her hair grazed his chest. “So,” she said in a soft voice. “You _are_ trying to blackmail me. Well, I’d say you have another thing coming if that were your intention.”

_Oh, I hope that’s true._

His hips started to cant forward of its own accord. She didn't flinch when he brushed up against the front of her dress, right up against her abdomen.

He didn’t realise he had spoken aloud until he saw her eyebrows rise. She took the wand away from him and clicked her tongue. “I don’t think you’ll say anything at all, Malfoy. Who would believe you if you did? What have you been doing all this time since we graduated anyway? Wasting your family’s money with expensive potions?”

She tapped the tip of her wand twice against his sternum, and he felt the answering response to that unspoken threat from the rapidity of his pulse. On the other hand, it was euphoria rather than fear that he felt. If he could just make her angry enough—

“I really don’t think you’ll be saying anything. On the other hand, there’s no need to risk it. Malfoy, I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t say anything, I won’t either. How’s that? Shall we make a pact?”

“What’s in it for me?” he asked, a bit truculently now that her tone was so businesslike and brisk.

Instead of reacting like how he expected, with a counteroffer, she laughed. “It’s a bit late to be playing the efficient businessman, don’t you think? It’s such a pity, too. Of all the things you could have done with yourself after graduation, you managed to blow up one entire section of the Manor and set fire to Bellatrix’s London property.”

“I do think I had reason to be upset, don’t you?”

“I lost _my_ parents and I didn’t wreck thousands of Galleons worth of property.”

“Do you want a prize for that?” he asked, annoyed now. Somehow, the blasted woman had managed to siphon out every last bit of lewd fun from their encounter. Worse, he didn’t even feel half as blotto as he thought the situation demanded. “Let me out of these ropes. You have my wand. This is a bit excessive, isn’t it?”

She considered his words for a moment and then vanished the ropes. He made a show of brushing off his robes where the invisible cords had bit into him. Then he adjusted his shirt cuffs, for all as though he had been taking a stroll through the park. When he turned to face her, the expression on her face indicated that she wasn’t in the least bit impressed with his show.

“So, do we have a deal?”

“The deal is that neither of us says anything about your—extracurricular hobbies?” he asked. When she nodded, he rolled his neck first to one side and then to the other before turning a feral grin on her. “Well, _darling_, I don’t see how this deal benefits me in the least. Like you said, I’m a bloody degenerate who’s done his best to ruin the lovely heritage left him by his esteemed parents. What do I care if people think I’m into sex fighting?”

Hermione hadn’t moved an inch from where she stood, one foot away from him. He thought it was probably an intimidation tactic that they taught her at the Ministry in whatever domineering capacity she currently worked at now. What she didn’t know was that he could see down her bloody dress and now knew she was wearing no stays of any kind. Despite how annoyed he was, he could still feel a heaviness in his groin.

_Luscious, erect pinkish-brown nipples with small areolas._ That was what he recalled from the arena.

He bet they would taste divine on his tongue. Like the rest of her smooth, golden skin.

She clicked her tongue several times in that irritating way she had earlier. “Like I said, we both get to keep our reputations squeaky clean.” Her expression indicated that his case was more doubtful than hers. “Furthermore, I’ll leave you without any unsightly blemishes on that beautiful skin of yours—”

All at once, he was smirking again. “Noticed, have you?”

She ignored him. “And—I’ll grant you a favour. How’s that?”

“A favour?”

“I expect you’ll need it sooner or later,” she said pointedly. “Given your reputed lifestyle and habits.”

He considered her offer critically and, to give himself credit, without any lewd thoughts. “Any time of the night or day? Without question?”

She drew in a deep breath and seemed to be muttering to herself. “I’m probably going to regret this—”

“Undoubtedly.”

“—but, it’s a favour, so even if your activity were illegal—barring intentionally causing the death of another human being—I’ll come out and help you, without tipping off the authorities. After the first twenty-four hours, you’re on your own. _Capisce_?”

“_Io caspisco, amata_,” he replied. “And it’s pronounced ‘ka-pee-shay.’”

She rolled her eyes. He thought she said something like, “Watch a movie sometime, idiot,” before she held out her left hand to him for a Pact Charm.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: Hermione dishes out a few things that could be construed as noncon, so please be warned.

It wasn’t Draco’s habit to remain sober throughout the day, so he was pleasantly sloshed on Friday when he made his way to the underground den and laid in wait for Blaise in a nearby alley.

After checking his watch every few minutes, he popped out when Blaise strode by.

“Jesus!” Blaise said, a hand held up to his chest as he started at Draco’s masked appearance. His eyes narrowed in scrutiny and recognition. “Oh, it’s you. Haven’t you learned not to jump out at people after the war?”

“It was over ten years ago,” Draco said, not pausing in his stride as he grabbed ahold of Blaise’s elbow and began to haul him along. “You weren’t even in England.”

“What are you doing here—oh.” Blaise broke free and backed away, holding up his hands as though he feared Draco’s presence would taint him. He was, in short, behaving like a complete ponce and Draco grimaced. “Oh, no. The answer’s _ no _, Malfoy. You’re not coming in with me again. Remember? You can’t.”

“Don’t worry about me, Blaise. It’ll be alright.” Draco patted Blaise’s back in the guise of urging him forward.

Blaise continued to grumble. “What is with you and gatecrashing parties? You’re going to have me kicked out.”

“Oh, I think Gwyneth will be very happy to see me.” Draco kept right alongside Blaise as they stepped up to the familiar door, jerking his chin pointedly towards the wandlock when Blaise hesitated.

Blaise sighed before complying, stabbing his wand into the opening in the door. “You’re on a first-name basis now?”

“You’re not?”

The wandlock turned green, and the sound of the bolts unlatching rang out before the door fell open. This time, knowing what to expect, Draco noticed the clamminess of the interior as soon as they stepped through. He could now identify the smell as sweat, and the smell of something else. Cheaply scented perfumes to mask the place of what it was. This place was like one of those cheaper nightclubs they used to sneak in on occasion when they were in their teens.

They lowered their voices as they made their way down the long corridor. This time, Draco led the way, hauling a reluctant Blaise in tow. 

Blaise groused the entire time. “What’s all this about anyway? Why have you taken such an interest in this place after turning up your nose at all the much nicer places I’ve taken you?”

“No reason.”

There was a pause. “Is it because Medusa bears a passing resemblance to a certain curly-haired classmate from our past?” Draco could hear the speculation in Blaise’s voice even though he couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. 

Dissembling came naturally to him. “I hadn’t noticed a resemblance,” Draco said, pushing open the door at the end of the hallway.

From behind him, Blaise chortled. “Haven’t you? Are you certain about that? Then why did I notice you eyeing her sideways the entire time? As for our illustrious Miss Granger, why don’t you simply trot up to the Ministry and donate some of the Malfoy artifacts to a worthy cause if you want to shag her so badly?”

They were the first ones there today. Draco ignored Blaise’s hearty chuckles to himself as they stepped up to the woman in charge, a witch named Gwyneth Farthingale with short-cropped light brown hair and the only participant in the entire club who was unmasked.

Gwyneth looked to be a few years older than Draco, with had a trim, curveless body and a no-nonsense manner about her. If they had met on the street, Draco would have assumed her to be an Auror, so much did she give the impression of regularly dueling with miscreants and holding them down for questioning. The truth wasn’t that far from the image, he supposed. 

“Well, hello,” she said to the two men with a lack of surprise that didn’t go unnoticed by Blaise, who glanced sideways at a smug Draco. “And our newest member.”

“Just a minute, Gwyneth,” Blaise cut in, holding up a hand. Even though Draco couldn’t make out his expression because of the mask, he could hear the slight annoyance in Blaise’s voice. “Didn’t you tell me last week that we were all full-up and you're not considering any applicants?”

“Well…”

“And that bringing a guest member was a one-time thing and that we weren’t giving out peep-shows for free?”

Gwyneth spread her hands. Her face had the placating expression of a bureaucrat. “On the surface of that, you’re right, but we’re going to make a special exception for your friend here.”

Draco and Gwyneth exchanged smiles, Draco dimpling as sweetly as he could. He tried not to smirk at Blaise, who was the only one in the room currently unsmiling and unimpressed with the two of them. “And why’s that?” Blaise asked.

“The club’s going to have a new arena, see? Here are the Portkeys prepared for our future sessions. We’ll be duking it out in Spain.”

Blaise turned his glare at Draco. “In Spain?”

“Oh, yes,” Draco said, examining his nails. “You remember that very quaint Romanesque theatre in Spain that my family owns. Amazingly well-preserved place and, with the charms on it, practically indistinguishable from ancient times. Gwyneth thought it’d give our sport an authentic feel to be able to perform on an ancient site. I informed her that if she requires, there’s also a smaller amphitheatre on the property nearby that would suit our purposes. She’s very excited to see it.”

Gwyneth turned to Blaise, as though prompting him to agree. “Isn’t your friend a useful addition? Money’s nice, but what we really need is atmosphere.”

“Happy to be of service, Gwyneth,” Draco said, formally holding out a hand to her, which Gwyneth took and shook heartily.

“You unscrupulous rich fuck,” Blaise said in a lower voice when Gwyneth had turned away. He sounded distinctly huffy, and Draco suppressed a grin. “So that’s how you did it.”

“Wasn’t it that easy for you to join?” Draco asked Blaise. Blaise was rich in his own right, with an additional vault gifted to him by each of his stepfathers—and that was not to mention the inheritance he would come into upon his marriage, but what he was was _ new money _. New money seldom came with property. Draco had more properties than he could visit in a year, something he only realised when his parents passed away and he was suddenly the new custodian of the Malfoy and Black holdings.

“No.” Blaise didn’t say any more than that and he looked decidedly grumpy. After a moment in which more participants trooped in, he spoke up again. “I hope you’re not going to ruin everything for me.”

“How could I do that?” Draco asked, spreading his hands innocently although he was distracted already. “I’m a club member, just like you.”

“This is a very bizarre thing to do, even for you,” Blaise said, pitching his voice low. “It’s carrying obsession a little far, wouldn't you agree? Besides, the scheduling is completely randomised, so it could be weeks before you get a shot at our little Granger-look-alike.”

“Shh.” When Blaise turned to him with a familiar perplexed tilt of his head, Draco made a downward pressing motion with his hands as he made the universal gesture for discretion. 

Blaise shrugged. “It’s not really her. So...what’s the fuss?”

Something in the way Draco didn’t respond immediately must have given him away, because Blaise cursed. “It’s _ her? _ Truly? You’ve got to be taking the mick out of me. It’s not possible.” Even as he said it, Blaise was craning his head around, his eyes combing over other participants to check for himself.

Draco made a grab for Blaise’s arm. At this point, Blaise was going to give them _ all _ away. “Of course it’s not her, you incompetent twat.”

“Yes, it is, and you’ve just given it away. Oh, God. Why her? She’s undercover, isn’t she? She’s going to report all of us and get us taken away to Azkaban.”

“Why would anyone do that? It's not illegal,” Draco said, his own eyes darting about the room to look for Medusa. He wanted to see the expression on her face when she saw him here, but unfortunately he was having to deal with Blaise having a mini-breakdown.

“Because—because it’s Hermione Granger! Don’t you remember how she was? ‘No chatting in study sessions! Mind your manners!’ and all that. The woman was a self-elected Grand Inquisitor. And...you’re not even listening to me.”

Draco’s attention had drifted as he watched the other club members file into the room, searching for the telltale bushy hair of his nemesis. He had been put on the roster against Medusa—completely randomised, of course—and he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet with glee.

“_Please _ do not be your usual arsewipe of a self,” Blaise was saying to him in a pleading voice as he stripped next to him. “Do _ not _ ruin this for me.”

Without looking sideways, Draco made short work of undressing down to his skivvies. He surveyed himself in the mirror as he finger-combed his hair and arranged it just so over the ties of his mask. He couldn’t resist flashing a grin at his own reflection. He was looking excellent, if he said so himself. “What do you care anyway? You could just go to any one of your dozens of sex parlors to work off your sex addiction.”

Blaise stiffened and drew himself up like an offended cat. “I don’t have a sex addiction. I merely have an extremely healthy sex drive—something you apparently know nothing about.”

“You can’t go half a day without sex, Blaise. I’d call that an addiction.”

“Oh, really. Well..._ you _can’t go a day without betting on something.”

Draco rolled his eyes. Normally, this sort of immature banter was right up his alley, but not when he had to prepare to surprise the shite out of one Medusa. “Well, lovely as it is to continue this chat, I really must concentrate now. If I were a betting man, I’d tell you to put your money on me.”

“Famous last words,” Blaise muttered.

  
  


* * *

  
  


There were two other men who had a match that evening along with Blaise and Draco. Both of them were unknown to Draco. He cast a surreptitious look at them while they disrobed in front of the mirror and decided that he still came out better than any of them.

Because of the exhibitionist qualities of his new hobby, Draco had spent more than a few hours earlier this week posing in front of the mirror, critically examining his naked body every which way. He had once had what was enviably dubbed “the best body in Slytherin.” After turning every which way and conjuring up a second and third mirror to the side of and behind him, Draco finally judged this still to be the case, despite a high-caloric diet based on alcohol. 

Wizards had not historically run to fat so easily, what with the hiding and the constant running for their lives from Muggle pyromaniacs. In the past five years though, Draco had noticed that complacency and a very rich diet (mostly imports from Muggles, the fat bastards) had started to result in mid-section growth among his compatriots. Fortunately, Draco was still in the minority in this area. His abdomen still naturally had a nicely carved six-pack, more notably from his skipping lunch that day. What had been a sad tendency to slimness in his past was now a highly coveted trait in his late twenties. Perhaps the potions and the alcohol balanced out each other.

Even more important an object of scrutiny were his sex organs. Compared to the other men who had performed the last week, Draco rather thought that he came off rather well in the girth and length competition. Holding his cock in his hand in front of the mirror, however, made him think of Granger, and her saucy defiance the night of the silent auction. That inevitably led to thoughts of her slim and perky body the previous week, and then Draco gave up thoughts of comparing or lunch and quickly jerked himself off to a satisfying fantasy—this one comprised of him fucking a masked and naked Hermione Granger into the mat while she loudly conceded his superiority.

Afterwards, even Draco had to consider the possibility that this would remain firmly a fantasy unless he did something about it, so he followed that up with some light reading from a pilfered Muggle wrestling magazine.

Which was why he felt extraordinarily confident tonight. 

One of the men gazed at him for a moment before nudging his friend. “You came as Draco Malfoy, eh? Brilliant lark.”

The friend, a tall ginger with freckles all over his chest and arms sniggered. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Draco Malfoy _ were _ among us. Have you heard of some of the things he’s up to?”

The first man reminded Draco unpleasantly of Harry Potter, down to the green eyes and wild, curly black hair. “He’s a right rich bastard, that one. He could probably just pay for it.”

Probably not exactly a carbon copy, Draco thought. Somehow the Cockney and the casual reference to paying for sex didn't gibe with the saintly image Potter always had.

“What’s your handle, mate?” asked the ginger.

“Dracula,” Draco said smoothly but didn’t reciprocate when the ginger held out his hand to him. He settled for a civil nod and kept his hands out of reach. “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“Even sound proper posh, don’t you? Damned good disguise, eh?” the Harry Potter said, crossing his arms over his hairy chest. “I’m Gibs, and that’s Monty.”

“Ah. Pleasure,” Draco said politely.

“I see from the roster that you’re up against the infamous Medusa,” Gibs said, turning out to be just as effusive as Harry Potter used to be. “Pity, that.”

Something in Draco pricked up at this mention of Medusa. “And why is that?”

“She’s a hard one, innit? Doesn’t like giving it up. Don’t even rightly know why she’s here, to be honest. Monty here lost to her in the first round.” Gibs apparently didn’t belong to the Gryffindor brand of loyalty, or else he considered Draco to be one of them.

Monty scowled at Gibs, and then Draco realised that he was having a moment of full-on deja vu. Potter and Weasley. He felt like gagging when he realised how realistic it was that the ginger had had a go at Hermione. A surge of irrational rage overtook him for a moment before he shook it off to mental cackles that sounded distinctly Blaise-like: _ Not obsessed, eh? Pull the other one. _

“Fucking made me blow my load straight off,” Monty muttered, his cheeks turning so red under his mask that his freckles stood out like a rash. “It’s not sporting behavior.”

“Why’d you come at her so hard-up, then?” Gibs asked.

“I like them small like her. Got me excited, is all.”

The feeling of dislike was growing.

“Maybe she prefers them posh like 'im,” Gibs said, jerking a thumb at Draco. “Went to Hogwarts. He’s not homeschooled like us.”

“Nothing wrong with homeschooling,” Draco said gallantly, though he had had enough of this small talk with two nearly naked men.

“Yeah, but Monty here’s practically a Squib,” Gibs said with a chortle. He ducked in a practised manner when Monty took a swing at him. “Didn’t even exhibit accidental magic until he was twenty!”  
  


Draco was saved from being inducted into their fellowship by Gwyneth who called for attention. “We have a new member with us today! He’s the reason that our new premises will take place next week in a brand-new, trendy site. Please come get your Portkeys from me between the matches or afterwards. First, let’s welcome COUNT DRACULA into our midst. It’s not just blood he plans on sucking, gels!”

Draco walked up and executed a leisurely about-turn to all the members present. There were enthusiastic clapping and cheering, and he noticed that more than a few women whistled for him. He was busy looking for Medusa.

_ And there she was. _

She was staring straight at him from behind her mask, her bushy hair today tied up into a ponytail. Draco was almost relieved that no sleek curls were on display tonight. With the mask on, most of her expressions were hidden from view. If she had worn her hair in the elaborate hairstyle she affected the night of the silent auction, it would have made her seem much too alien. Currently, with hair in a giant fluffy ponytail, he could just about imagine her facial features—the set of her mouth combined with the unimpressed angle of her head and the provocative positioning of her crossed arms—yes, she looked quite put out with him for appearing here tonight. He smiled back beatifically at her and watched the bottom half of her face get even stonier.

“Alas for our newest member, we shall be inducting him into our ranks tonight with a match with one of our undefeated champions—MEDUSA! Everyone give a hand for Medusa!"

Draco and Medusa were the only ones not clapping, and, of the two of them, Draco was the only one smiling.

"Now! RULES!”

Draco made his way into the ring, not taking his eyes off Medusa for one second. She walked straight up to him, ignoring how his eyes tracked her from head to toe and back again. She only came up somewhere below his shoulders tonight. As predicted. 

_ No heels. The perfect height. _

She didn't wear a string bikini like the other women wore. Instead, her white top looked like a bandage, wrapped up all around her and her neck. Her lower bits were similarly covered, with two sashes that went around her midriff. 

He was a little disappointed. It didn't look like it'd be easy to pull off. In fact, he wouldn't put it past her to have put a sticking charm on her clothes. The other men had called her _ not sporting_. For someone who had voluntarily come into this sport, she wasn't showing the same enthusiasm for it that the other women were.

“You came as Draco Malfoy,” she said in a lowered voice from between gritted teeth. Gwyneth was still droning on about the rules.

“It’s the perfect disguise. Nobody even questioned it.” He grinned back at her.

“Are you following me, you smirky bastard?”

He tsked. “Language.”

She scowled at him, her eyes glittering from under the mask.

“And actually, I was here before you.”

She leaned towards him. 

His lips quirked as he hunched over into the traditional starting position.

Her eyes were spitting fire at him and her fingers were forming into claws as she swayed in position. “Find your own hobby, Malfoy.”

“Pact,” he said and gestured pointedly with his left hand. “Or you’ll owe me.”

If she ground her teeth down even more, she’d have stumps in her mouth. “I’m going to destroy you, _ Dracula._”

“Oh, I look forward to it,” he said and leaned into her so that their foreheads almost touched. He gave her his most taunting smirk. “But I doubt it. Tiny thing like you.”

Something dangerous flickered in her eyes.

“READY!”  
  


* * *

  
  


The thing about his defeat was that it made him instantly popular amongst the men. 

Before he was soundly trounced in the arena, there had been a few disgruntled mutters from the men about pretty boys when he stepped inside the ring, and more than a few women shouted, “You can beat me anytime, Dracula.” 

Afterwards, Monty and Gibs both gave him unwelcome slaps of camaraderie on the shoulders and backs until he wanted to hex them. A look of warning from Blaise behind the two made him sullenly tuck his wand back into his robes.

“You did good, Drax,” Gibs told him, egregiously shortening his made-up name. “I saw what you did there. You spanked her. That was a good one.”

It was, rather. It was wank-worthy material right there. Unfortunately, he couldn’t really recall how pleasant her round, soft bum was under his hands because she pinned him rather fiercely after that, cutting off his air until he pounded the ground for mercy. She hadn't caved even when he gripped her thighs with his hands and physically tried to force them apart from around his jaw.

He wished he had paid more attention to his wrestling magazine, because the forms had looked so simple on paper. Yet how did one get to be in that position when your adversary moved like an unholy dervish? He hadn’t even gotten two peeks at her golden breasts before she had snuck behind him and felled him to the ground with some well-placed kicks behind the knees. He hadn’t been able to do more than place an open-mouthed kiss on her inner thigh before she strangled him with her legs. Multiple times.

The skin of her inner thighs was unbearably soft and silky against his face and it should have been easy to turn sideways so he could lick the sweat on her thighs. He was locked into place, like a starving man tortured with continual smells of the most gourmet food known to man. He could smell her mere inches away from his face. What would she taste like? Would he like it? It had never before been such an important question, or so impossible to answer. 

He enjoyed the brevity of the skin on skin contact when she laid full on top of him, her luscious arse right on top of his chest, her chin on top of his lower belly. If she inched down just a little more, he could nose his way right into her slit and start suckling on her. It was _ right there _ and he was a grown man who outweighed her by a good five stone, possibly more. Yet he was unable to shift her by an inch. It was probably the way she had interlocked her ankles behind his head and he was unpleasantly aware of how easy it would be for her to twist his neck and snap his spine in two. 

Funny how that had absolutely no dousing effect her soft hair had rubbing against his growing cock. 

Never had consensual sex taken on such a pointed meaning.

The blood was pounding in his ears and faintly he registered the cheers of the crowd as his cock lengthened to nestle against her temple. 

She could have had pity on him and touched him. But, no. Medusa was having none of that. She spared a pitiless smirk at his excited state and dropped him like a pin. 

To the disappointed coos from the audience, Gwyneth declared Medusa to be still the undefeated champion. “Ladies’ choice!” she shouted as Draco lay still, hoping the ringing in his ears would stop soon. 

He opened one eye and then another as Medusa smiled wickedly at him from her standing position. She was glorious, a conquering and vengeful goddess, with her golden body slick with sweat and standing with her feet apart in victory. His scrotum tightened and his cock bobbed with excitement as she moved closer. She had the sort of nipples he adored the most; the kind of protuberant nubbin that was substantial enough to really sink his teeth on, and her breasts were so firm and sensational he almost wept with the need to touch them.

They were all he could see as she stepped forward and knelt down beside him. He limply lifted an arm from the mat out to them--her. 

_ Yes _ , he thought, breathless. His mouth was open with anticipation. _ Yes yes yes. _

She took out her wand and conjured up something in her hand that was black under the lights. Draco narrowed his eyes and tried to make it out, but the light was behind her and shining straight in his eyes. All his attention was on her red, red lips, coming closer and closer, anyway. This little temptress was going to blow him. He couldn't be that lucky, could he? Dear lord, he wouldn’t last a minute. Maybe not even half a minute. His outstretched hand clenched into a fist of determination and he lowered it resolutely down to his side. If he even touched her now, if there were any skin contact at all, he’d be lost for good. He had to make this last. The culmination of _ several years worth _ of late night fantasies was going to come to fruition. Whoever said that fantasies didn’t come true?

There was a caress on his thigh as she lightly stroked him from knee to hip and Draco felt his breath lodge in his throat so forcefully that he almost choked. The crowd hooted and screamed. The black thing in her hand came closer and closer, and then, all of a sudden, Draco knew exactly what it was.

A dildo.

Draco squinted up at her in confusion and glanced back at the dildo in her hand. Come on, he thought with a scoff. His instrument was just as good—and _ bigger—_than _ that. _

“Fuuuuuuck him up, Medusa!” screamed a voice from the side. It reached Draco’s ears as though the shout was travelling in slow motion.

Wait a minute.

Wait just a _ fucking _ minute.

“I do hope that’s for you,” he said, struggling to sit up. He fell back down when she placed a foot in the center of his chest and pressed. Both of his hands came up to touch her foot, working their way up her toned calf. He couldn’t help but lick his lips when he saw the juncture of her legs just out of reach. He could _ see _ the plump lips of her slit from here. Why had Blaise been so against his coming here? This was _ so much better _ than all the other places he had gone with him.

Medusa cocked her head to the side and smiled down at him, the first smile she had given him tonight. “Don’t you know when you’ve lost...Dracula? It’s called winner’s choice for a reason.”

He blinked up at her, his hands frozen. She removed her foot and dropped gracefully down on one knee next to him. His eyes flickered down to her breasts and he swallowed.

“Do you understand what that means?” she continued, still in that low, soft voice that couldn’t be heard beyond the ring. When he continued to salivate silently at her chest, she heaved a sigh and bent over him. The hand holding the dildo gripped his chin, forcing it up so that their eyes met. She leaned still closer. “I’m going to fuck _ you _.”

The ball dropped.

This damned, malicious woman.

“No fucking way,” he said, and launched himself up into a sitting position. Winner's choice, indeed. _ Fucked any way the winner desired. _ The rules were starting to make a horrible sort of sense.

Boos resounded around them as Medusa moved away and sank onto her haunches, her hands on her hips. She was still smiling, but the tilt of her lips was different. The slight tilt of her head said, very clearly, that no matter what, Draco had lost.

He froze. He hadn’t been listening at all when Gwyneth made him sign a parchment and spoke about the “unwritten rules” of the game. Had he missed something? “What happens if I refuse?” he asked. He spoke to her breasts, which were glowing with sweat.

“You get your membership revoked.” Her head was tilted to one side, challengingly. Then she gazed around the room and, under the guise of running the tip of the dildo up his sternum, she leaned in to whisper, “Wouldn’t that be for the best? Go home. You don’t need to do this. You_ can’t _do this.”

Her whisper sent a current straight through his body. This bloody woman. Everything she did electrified him like nothing anyone else did. If he left here, he would never get to have her at all, never get to see this side of her again, never feel the touch of even her finger in such an intimate way again. She was staring into his eyes, urging him to reconsider...yet there was something else there, a taunt: _ you’re not able to beat me at this game_, she was saying.

“Do your fucking worst, Hermione,” he said, emphasising every word. Then he dropped back onto the mat, folding his hands over his chest. 

That was when she flipped him over and straddled his back.

  
  


* * *

“Goddamn, you took that like a champ,” Blaise said amidst the roar of the crowd around him. He had one fist raised in an air pump. “Tough luck, huh? How’s that feel?”

“Like I’ve just had a bloody oar shoved up my rear.” That wasn’t completely correct. He wouldn’t say he _ loved _ it, but there had been something so thoroughly intimate about that, not knowing what was to come or what to expect. To feel her fingers trace idly up the back of his legs. 

To be honest, Draco wasn’t sure _ what _ he thought about it. Maybe he hated it. He still had a very disappointed penis, after all.

Most of what bothered him was the unbearable disappointment that he wasn’t going to be able to get anywhere near her hole tonight. The thought made him almost incandescent with rage at himself and his words came out short and brusque. “How did you think it’d feel?” 

Blaise seemed to seriously consider his rhetorical question. “Well, you do get used to it. It’s not so bad, especially when they massage you while doing it. Though I didn’t see her doing that, did I?”

The fact was, Draco must have blacked out at some point, because he had forgotten about the crowd. The fact that Blaise had seen it all and even categorised the technique was strange and somehow humiliating. He felt unmanned in a way—and not even in a good way. Now all the smirks around them made even more embarrassing sense. Hermione Granger had fucking mounted him in public, never mind the masks. It was like school all over again, when she would belittle him in public and even punch him in the bloody face. He was working himself up into a fine rage and it felt good. Familiar. He jerked on his trousers. “How is any of this legal?”

“It probably isn’t.” Blaise wore the complacent expression of a man who hadn't just gotten buggered in front of an audience of strangers and a shrug that indicated Draco brought this on himself. 

“Where did she go?” Draco asked, shrugging on his shirt and for once not caring if he didn't button it up correctly. 

Blaise cackled a bit, hiding it behind one hand unsuccessfully. Draco didn't think he was trying at all. “I don’t think you’d get far, _ Drax_. You’re—walking sort of funny.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s a bit catchy, isn’t it?”  
  


“You said she always facesits!”

“Guess she didn’t feel like it tonight,” Blaise said with the shrug of a man who was reasonably assured of good sex in his horizon. “Maybe she just felt like taking the oars in hand for once.”

Blaise was lucky he was moving so slowly that night. 


	5. Chapter 5

Draco stayed away from the arena for two weeks as he contemplated his crushing disappointment and defeat. He spent his time at the race tracks, betting Galleons on a pair of silvery white hippocampi whose odds were twenty to one. 

The race tracks were located on a small Spanish atoll off the coast of northwestern Africa called Náyade. The circular ring of islands actually formed around a blue hole, which the locals called _ el ojo del náyade _, the eye of the mermaid. To the Muggle eye, it was much smaller and less interesting than it actually was. 

There were seats all along the north and south side of the ring where spectators could sit around on the surface or underwater to take in the racing. The first part of the racing comprised of circling the outside of the blue hole before diving in for the underwater portion. The racing took one week to complete. The blue hole was a portal, connecting to its sister hole in the Red Sea on the other side of the continent of Africa. 

The hippocampi Draco poured money into were small and lean compared to their competition. Odds were against them for winning, but he thought that was fitting, considering his public loss at the hands of one Hermione Granger, she who had seen to plenty of his losses of face throughout the years. 

Draco joined the group following the racing and made the flight over in tandem with others on broomstick. When he collected his winnings after a week, he was filled with new resolve. 

He wasn't finished with Hermione Granger yet. Not by a long shot.

  
  


* * *

Luckily, Draco found that Hermione Granger was almost fanatically active in the community. In addition to her illicit activities, there was the Sentient Beasts Association, the Were-folk Alliance, the War Orphans Foundation, the Deforestation Initiative, just to name a very few.

It served him very well to know that she belonged in so many committees. Bumping into her casually was not going to be a problem. 

"What are you doing here?" she asked him with a predictable sigh of resignation when he showed up at the Deforestation Initiative.

"Looking for investment opportunities," he said, transfiguring a tree stump into a chair before moving it to her other side. He checked his watch and wondered if his owl had reached his lawyer in time. “You’re so talented with an..._ instrument _. I thought it behooved me to find out what else you’re up to.”

She didn’t react, but he hadn’t expected her to. "This isn't an investment opportunity. This is a philanthropic organisation, and I'm speaking with the centaurs to discuss the skirmishes occurring—are you even allowed to be here?"

"I'd say so, given that the property in discussion belongs to my family."

Hermione's scowl could have overturned a ship. She gazed all around them, at the forest surrounding them. "This belongs to your family? We're in Scotland."

"Parts of it do. The good parts, anyway, though I'm sure the centaurs think otherwise."

Her expression was filled with a new understanding. "No wonder you were so afraid of centaurs first year."

His laugh was short and without mirth. "They'd have used any excuse to kidnap me and kill me. Not now that I've come into my majority, though, so don't get too happy about it."

She gazed around them before turning to look at him. At the light in her eyes, he gathered that she had decided to focus her reforming zeal on him. "Selling off and cutting down the forest has led to a decrease in the centaurs' numbers, you know."

"Mmm. So you prefer centaurs, do you? Ever wrestle with one?" He smiled at her.

She nodded pointedly at his left hand. "We are in public, remember?"

Draco made a show of swiveling his upper body around to look about him. "No one here. And anyway, I'm just trying to pin you down. Metaphorically, that is." 

He was enjoying this. They were on neutral territory now, no longer _ her _ ground. She hadn’t lured him into another room under the guise of some hanky-panky only to tie him up. He wasn’t down for the count and under her feet. He had the urge to see what she would do when she wasn’t in control. Or maybe she could only let loose when she held the oars, so to speak.

"You're not funny," she said.

"Are you certain? I'm sure I saw a smirk."

She let him have that one and they sat in silence for a few minutes, staring into the same direction, into the Black Forest, which was aptly named in terms of ownership. It was gorgeous scenery in summer, with green and silver leaves dotting the foreground and a warm summer breeze that carried with it the scent of grass and Scottish pine.

"Tell me, why do you do it?" he asked. The question slipped unbidden out of him. That was it right there—his overwhelming curiosity about all this. It had niggled at him for the past few weeks, even beyond the wet dreams she was now giving him. Hermione Granger had always fit nicely into a box he had set up for her: know-it-all, do-gooder, studious. She no longer fit inside that box, a construct he had set up to pin her down in her little corner. Now, she had revealed herself to be merely donning that construct as a disguise of her own. How could he not be intrigued? 

She sighed, the motion making her entire upper body lift and fall. She half turned to him, her frizzy hair falling over her shoulder. 

Today, she wore traditional woodland garb probably to appease the centaurs. She was barefoot, she wore a shimmery, drapey sort of white linen gown, and there were a few flowers in her loose hair. He had thought he had come across a woodland nymph before he realized it was her. With Hermione Granger, Draco realised, there was an infinite array of faces she presented to the public. She looked as elusive and sprightly now as she had appeared vengeful and powerful the last time he saw her. Which was the real Hermione Granger? Draco didn’t think he had ever cared much about the motivations of his objects of lust, but now he found that this question nagged at him.

Her bare toes curled into the dirt as she turned to face him, throwing a bare arm over the back of her chair. The setting sun glowed behind her, casting a reddish-golden aura around her hair, touching her dark curls with bronze and copperish lights. "If I tell you, will you leave me alone?" Her put-upon expression urged him to agree.

He picked up a strand of her fulsome hair from where it lay across her upper arm and rubbed it between his fingers. "I'll consider it. No promises, though."

Her response was a ragged huff of irritation that pulled the hair from his fingers. “Seriously, did you _ like _being pegged, Malfoy?”

He riposted with a calm, deadpan expression. “So. Out in the open is how you want it, is it?”

Instead of responding at once, she peered all around them before muttering, half to herself, "Just where is everyone?" Then, right on time, an owl fluttered overhead and dropped a missive into her lap before silently disappearing into the forest.

Draco waited, lightly tapping his chin, while she opened the scroll. "Perfect." There was a deep frown marring her brow. "It's been cancelled and rescheduled."

"Looks like your evening just opened up," he said blandly. He ran a finger along his jaw before setting his elbow against the back of his chair.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You wouldn't have anything to do with this, would you?"

"I really don't care enough about the centaurs to interfere," he said with enough derision to ease her suspicion. "Have you been to the tavern at the bottom of the hill? They do quite a mean steak and kidney pie. Not my usual fare, of course, but it'd do for your dryad ensemble."

She followed his hand gesture and gazed down at herself. The linen dress, upon closer inspection, appeared more like bits of fabric pinned together to create straps over her chest and arms, wrapping tightly around her slim waist before falling to the ground in purposefully tattered folds. "Stop laughing. This is proper attire when speaking to centaurs."

"I'm not laughing." He definitely did not feel like laughing about how much he wanted to throw her down on the ground and ravish her. The flimsiness of her outfit gave him many ideas on how easy it would be to simply rip apart the linen straps to feast on her body. To hell with his restrictions on bedroom antics taking place only in proper settings. He concentrated on keeping his eyes on her face. "You look very...er, woodsy."

"Hold on," she said and took out her wand. In another few moments, she had transmuted her woodsy dress for something that she clearly brought with her in her bag. 

It was how he remembered seeing her in the odd times they had been off from Hogwarts at Hogsmeade: a striped shirt atop denims and trainers. Her hair was still wild and loose around her and he remembered that too. "You look like a teenager again.” 

"Shut up," she said automatically, reaching up to pull out the flowers in her hair.

"You missed one." He pulled another from her curls, handing the snowdrop to her. "There. All transmogrified."

She made a face at him. "Only you would think dressing like a Muggle looked grotesque."

"Did I say grotesque? Don't put words in my mouth. If it were something a little more salacious on the other hand…"

She rolled her eyes. "Are you going to make me regret this?"

"Unquestionably. Need you ask?"

They got up from the bench and Draco began walking towards the rise, checking to make sure Hermione followed. She was all covered up now, but the way her clothes clung to her every curve did not help to keep his anticipation in check.

At the top of the hill, he pointed down where a lone stone cottage sat, nestled at the fork of the road visible from their vantage point. She groaned but nodded. Then he waited until the crack of her Disapparation sounded before he, too, followed suit.

"So," he said once they had seated themselves in one of the booths inside the tavern named _ Dick in the Wall _. "What do you feel like? Fish and chips, bangers and chips, steak and chips, or miscellaneous and chips?"

"I thought you said this place had a steak and kidney pie." Hermione stared at the menu, which was scrawled up on a blackboard behind the bar.

"Not anymore, love," said the waitress with a name tag "call me Bertha!" pinned over her generous bosom. She bore two glasses with her that she held with her fingers square inside the glasses. These were set down with a loud clatter on the table before she picked one up again, squinting at a smudge and polishing it with her apron, which had also seen better days. "Them centaurs are terrible for business. We keep things simple-like now."

Draco raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Hermione, who fidgeted and said finally, "Right. Miscellaneous and chips, then."

"Right you are, and you, love?" 

"Steak and chips, thank you. And bring a bottle of that Storm Ale, if you should happen to have any."

"That we do, Mr Black. Liquor’s what we’ve got plenty of," Bertha said before bustling off. 

"Mr Black?" Hermione asked after she had left.

"It's what she calls me. It’s easier to remember. I am, unfortunately, the last Black heir."

"Ah," Hermione replied, looking anywhere but at him. She seemed uncomfortable now that they were sitting face to face with nothing but smudged glasses between them.

He cast a few cleansing charms on their glasses and watched as the glasses wobbled a bit on the tabletop.

"So, are you going to tell me all?" he said when the silence had grown too heavy for comfort.

She groaned and tucked a bit of hair behind her ear. Her cheeks were flushed. "Look, it's really not that interesting. It isn't anything deep or profound or anything like that." She huffed at the ceiling. "I hate you having anything over me."

"No pun intended?"

She continued to hedge, as he had known she would. "Is it ever any one thing? Or an entire conglomerate of things?”

“That’s cheating. Spill, Granger.” He leaned over the table and gave her his best “I’m completely trustworthy” look. “I’m reasonably reassured that you you’d find it liberating.”

She groaned again, but this time there was a little laugh that accompanied it. “It's freeing, all right? That’s why. And...I never lose. I have nothing to lose by it. And it’s silly but I like how sexually freeing it is. The men in my life think of me as a goody-two-shoes, someone smart and good at research, but--look, you wouldn’t understand.”

“They’ve put you on a pedestal?” he finished her thought for her. 

“In a way, I suppose.” She shook her head. “It isn’t any sort of a glorified position or anything. They just say, ‘Oh, that’s Hermione. She’s afraid of flying and she’s against having _ fun _.’” Her left hand was suddenly clenched on the tabletop. When she noticed his eyes resting there, she forcibly released her fist and shrugged. 

Draco had a solid guess as to what had spoken that exact quote, but he kept mum. “They must not know you very well then. I don’t think you’re afraid to try _ anything _.”

He had lowered his voice when he said it, and it was a comment guaranteed to make women cream in their knickers for the innuendo there. Instead, he saw a brief unreadable expression cross her face, and he could have sworn it was disappointment he had seen there. He was so distracted by it that he almost missed her next words.

“They’re blind,” she said, her tone flat and closed off again. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t have anything to prove to them.”

She was a little blind herself, Draco thought. If he had to hazard a guess, the person who had royally ticked her off was one red-haired Ronald Weasley, someone with whom she had always had a very loud and contentious relationship. It had been the kind of love-hate relationship that everyone deemed as good as marriage, long before they had come of age, but rumours of that famous year on the run had culminated in their growing farther apart, not closer. Draco was fairly certain that Weasley’s hopes towards her hadn’t died, and “respecting Hermione” was Weasley’s method of slowly closing the friend zone gap. 

Since it didn’t behoove Draco to tell Hermione any of this, he kept mum on the issue.

He smiled smoothly at her. "The men in your life are fools. But I always knew that." 

She made a disbelieving sound at his comment. "Oh, _ really _ . I seem to recall you being a _ major _ part of the problem. Who was it who went out of his way to make me feel inferior at every turn? Who made fun of the way I looked and acted and—and, just everything about me!" Her cheeks were definitely flushed now.

Bertha came back and slid their steaming hot plates onto the table in front of them. What she lacked in dishwashing proficiency, she made up for in her balancing act, as she then put a large jug of Storm Ale and a plate of golden-brown Yorkshire puddings next to their plates. "On the house," she said cheerily before waggling her bottom away.

"I was a fool for the better part of my life." Draco made sure to look down at his plate as he spun this familiar spiel. He fingered the edge of his fork and made a downturned line with his lips. “But can you really blame me?” At this, he peeked up at her through his fringe. He didn’t blink his eyes, which he had been told were really very lovely.

They locked gazes for a moment, and he could see where the light made her irises a clear hazel instead of the dark brown it usually was. She had very long, dark eyelashes, even on the bottom eyelids. He held his breath when she didn’t say anything for a good long while.

Then she narrowed her eyes and made a _ pffft _ sound. “Pull the other one, Malfoy. Does that sad little boy routine usually work for you?”

He popped a chip into his mouth. “Usually does, yes.”

“Then you must be _ usually _good at Occlumency.”

“Were you rummaging inside my brain, Granger? That’s private!” He feigned outrage.

“Private? That little act that’s been seen by no less than twenty women?” She stopped cutting her strip of steak for a moment and leaned over her plate. “Malfoy, you’re a disgusting prick, do you know that?”

“Quite a bit larger than a prick, which I’m sure you know, as you’ve seen it.” Her flattened hand lay within inches of his and he flicked out a finger to let it glance over her knuckles. “It’s quite telling how different you are without a mask on. But you don’t need one with me.”

Her cheeks were flushed as she jerked back her hand, but she kept her gaze steady. “I won’t need anything with you. Period.” She smiled without it reaching her eyes and sat back in her seat before turning her head toward the counter. “Bertha!”

“Coming!”

“Some ale?” Draco asked, picking up the jug. He had a decent guess about what was happening next and he couldn’t help but want to prolong the inevitable.

Hermione shrugged. 

“This is Storm Ale, you know. It’s said that it’s brewed under a full thunderstorm, on top of a mountain. They say that it increases your magical output and—” he gave her a speaking look “—magnifies every possible sensation for the next hour.”

She took the glass from him and sipped. “They say a lot of things,” she said with a meaningful look at him. “But it doesn’t mean that any of it is true.”

He toasted her with his glass. “Some of it is.” He kept his eyes on her, willing her to know what he meant.

She took another sip before setting down the almost full glass. “It’s very good ale. But I’ve had better. Bertha, the food is wonderful, but I’m afraid I have to be going. Can you wrap this up for me?”

Bertha glanced sideways at Draco before shrugging as though washing her hands of interfering. “'Course, dear.” She pulled out a wand from her apron and tapped it twice on the table. The plate underneath Hermione’s food flattened and collapsed into a flat piece of waxed cardboard before boxing the contents up and latching the top closed.

“Thank you! That was lovely.” Hermione looked clearly delighted with Bertha’s to-go charms, less so with Draco, as the droop in her lips indicated when she turned to him. “I think we’re done here?” 

Draco made a noncommittal movement of his shoulders and popped another chip into his mouth. In another second, Hermione had slid out of the booth, picked up the box, and said briskly, “Thanks for the takeaway, Malfoy. Goodbye.”

Bertha kept standing next to the table after Hermione left the tavern. The sound of Apparation rang out like a hearty clap outside. “So,” Bertha said, wiping her hands on her apron. “That didn’t go well, did it?”

  
  


* * *

When Draco showed up that Friday, Medusa was already there. She took a look at him from across the ancient Roman theatre and rolled her eyes. He could see it even across the distance. Then she jumped off what was left of the pulpitum and made her way over to where he stood on the stage.

“Let me guess, this belongs to your family as well?” she asked, waving a hand to encompass the whole of the place.

“Impressed?”

He was smirking, because the grounds looked unkempt and neglected. From all appearances, it was little more than a heap of rubble, not even worthy to be deemed proper ruins. She looked distinctly less than impressed, and his smirk grew.

“Watch this.” He waved his wand and murmured an incantation. 

Slowly, the Roman concrete around them changed colours and blocks restacked itself to form into what was once a Roman theatre with an imperial background facade. Time turned back as paintings and drawings began to solidify on the walls of the theatre in front of them. The roof regained its age-old colour. Flags of a multitude of colours and fabrics sprouted from their poles mounted on the columns of the scaenae frons, the high back wall of the stage floor. Sconces flared with giant flickering torch fire at the top of basilica and along all the vomitorium, the passageways interspersed throughout the stadium seating. Trumpets suddenly blared from the top of the auditorium as though sentries stood there, ready with fanfare to announce the proceedings. 

Within minutes, the rubble was no longer rubble, but was instead a good dramatic representation of an ancient Roman city. The elaborate backdrop of the stage, which had been crumbling remains, now restored, were grand in its scale and detail, bearing three floors of windows and hidden entrances, complete with balconies and shielded doorways. Columns had sprouted anew from the ground to form graceful frames around statues partially hidden inside their niches.

She gasped in awe at the sight, holding a hand to her chest as she spun about to watch the spectacle. “This is—incredible. If you own so many properties, think of all the things you could do with them.”

“I _ am _doing things with them. I’ve generously loaned out this arena to our sex fighting association, haven’t I?”

Medusa shook her head. The light had faded from her eyes at his flippant words, and when she turned back to face him, there was a furrow between her brows. “What are you still doing here anyway? I thought we had a deal. You were supposed to leave me alone after last time.”

“I said I’d consider it. And I did. I’m afraid I simply don’t want to.”

She looked annoyed but not that surprised. “That bored with your life of idleness and riches?” Her inquiry was a dry drawl.

He gestured at the theatre again. “Did you know that only the Nameholder can wield the Preservation Charm?” He dropped his arm and watched the warm summer breeze play with the torchlight. They could smell the salty sea air from here. “If this place reverted to the public, no one would ever be able to see this again.”

She nodded slowly and he watched the torchlight play over the angles of her face. “Yes, that would be a pity. Only—isn’t it a pity that only the members of our tawdry little association can see it?” Her question was tinged faintly with irony.

“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “No one wants to hear about the Malfoys anymore. After all, didn’t we get off too lightly? Isn’t the name of Malfoy tantamount to a curse word?” There was a slight mocking edge in his tone, and he tilted his head at her, waiting for her to agree with him. _ She _ was the one who still considered him lower than scum—not without reason, he’d be the first to admit. That didn’t mean it didn’t sting. For all that he considered the past over and done with, the memories of yesteryear were strangely sharp and reminiscent on faces whenever he stepped out into public. 

He had just forgotten. Momentarily.

Even with masks on, the past still flowed like a turbulent river all around him.

“You—” she began and stopped. He turned to look at her. She was looking at him oddly, as though she had never seen him before. The pause seemed significant somehow. “Malfoy, I--” 

She was cut off by the arrival of Gwyneth.

“Ah, just look at this!” Gwyneth exclaimed. She had her hands upraised as she walked all around the stage. The torchlight was gentle on her features, softening her sharp cheekbones and gentling her thin lips. She was beaming all around. “Drax, oh, Drax, my dear.”

What had she been about to say? “It’s Count Dracula. I don’t know why everyone is shortening it. It’s really not that hard to say.”

“This is _ gorgeous _, my dear!” Gwyneth clapped her hands together. “It didn’t look like this last time. Was this your doing?”

“Yes, it’s the—yes, it’s tied to the owner of the property,” Draco said, waving off her effusive compliments. “It’s really nothing. This place is actually rather small, as Roman theatres go. I gather that was why nobody ever bothered to take this place off our hands.”

“And it’s so amazingly well-preserved. Can you feel the magic, my dear?” Gwyneth asked Medusa.

“It’s lovely,” Medusa responded in the rote tone of someone requested to echo an unimportant sentiment.

“Ah, how wonderful it would be to watch our wrestlers compete here,” Gwyneth said, for all as if she were anticipating high theatre instead of a tawdry game of mixed wrestling that usually ended in a controlled orgy. “And you’re our first match! Excellent!”

Medusa had been smiling at Gwyneth’s enthusiasm. At her comment, the smile slid off her face. “What?”

“You—and Dracula here. Our first match.” Gwyneth smiled encouragingly at them.

Medusa sputtered. “How? How is it that we’re matched up again? It’s supposed to be random.”

“Completely random,” Gwyneth said with an assuring air. “Ah, there’s the fairy wine. Dracula, how generous of you to supply us with fairy wine tonight.”

“And every other night that I’m here.” Draco directed this at Medusa, who scowled back at him.

“Well, I’ll leave you lovebirds to it,” Gwyneth said before floating off to examine other parts of the theatre.

“You!” Medusa pointed an accusing finger at Draco.

“I?”

“You bribed her! With—with _ fairy wine _.”

“Now why would I do that?”

“To—to…” she trailed off, seeming at a genuine loss for a plausible explanation she could accept. Truth be known, Draco didn’t himself understand the lengths he was going to for this--endeavour. What was he hoping to gain? “I don’t know—why _ are _you doing that? You know I’m going to trounce you again.”

More people had Portkeyed into the location and were exclaiming over the sight of the restored ancient Roman theatre. When the countdown to the games ended, Gwyneth raised her wand to her throat and spoke up. “Yes, yes, it looks different tonight than previous nights because tonight, we have our own Dracula in person, and he was able to enchant this magical place for us. As well as provide us with improved refreshments!”

There was an elbow to his side, and Draco glanced down.

“Why does it matter so much to win against me?” Medusa whispered to him, leaning in so that she could be heard over the cheering.

“—and our first match will be the undefeated Medusa and the glutton for punishment and ever good sport, Count Dracula!”

“What, again?” someone asked. 

There was some murmuring and Medusa made a humming sound under her breath. She shook her head, looking pleased. “You can’t keep doing this, you know. People are going to complain. It’s supposed to be completely randomised.”

As Draco watched with arms crossed over his chest, the group of men who had been talking to Gwyneth turned to find him standing with Medusa. All of them, as one, raised their glasses of fairy wine and toasted him. “To Dracula!”

Draco smirked down at a dismayed Medusa. “You underestimate the allure of truly vintage fairy wine. Have you ever had any?”

She almost growled out her answer as she tossed back her hair in irritation. “Does it have mind-altering substances, such as the ones you like to imbibe?”

“You certainly turn cheeky when you’re thwarted, don’t you?”

Medusa poked a finger directly into his chest. “Is it because I once punched you in front of an audience? Is that it? I made a fool out of you and now you finally have a chance to get your own back?”

Draco grabbed the finger with his fist and pulled it gradually towards him until she snatched her hand away with a snap of her wrist. “Or maybe it’s because you made a masochist out of me, and you didn’t even know it.”

She stepped back so that she could look full on his face. Her hands flew to her hips. “We had a deal, and you’re breaking your word. I don’t want to have to keep seeing you here.”

“Then you should stop making me come,” he said with raised eyebrows. 

“Subtle. What’s it going to take for you to leave me alone? Find your own damn hobby. _ This _ is mine.”

“How about when I win?”

She gave an inelegant snort and took another step backwards. On the other side of the crowd, Gwyneth’s voice lifted in volume as she hailed the first grouping--them. “That’ll never happen.”

“Best two out of three?”

  
  


* * *

It started out fairly well for Draco. 

He had the upper hand. He managed to latch a hand between her legs and pin her to the ground. Medusa stared up at him with an expression full of outrage, which was the only reason he knew she hadn’t let him have that one. He grinned down at her and bent to nip her lightly on her nipple through the fabric of her top. It pebbled instantly under his mouth and he couldn’t help but grin as he placed an open-mouthed kiss on the top of her breast that wasn’t covered and was exposed to the air.

_ She was as turned on as he was. _

She bucked underneath him. “Give in,” he mouthed to her, feeling exhilarated when she bared her teeth at him. Against her ear, he blew out the comment in a whisper that fluttered the hair at her temple, “You might like it.”

That was when she threw her forehead against his, cracking his skull and knocking him for a loop. When his hands flew up to touch his head, sure that she had broken something, she spun out from her prone position.

Nearing the end of the first round, she had him completely pinned to the mat, lying flat on his back, his head lying in between Medusa’s thighs, his hands gripping her hips. Which, in the grand scheme of things, was his current goal in life.

At this particular juncture, unfortunately, she was also lying on her back, and her knees were criss-crossed on top of his jugular. His face had probably started to turn an alarming puce before time was called.

The second round started out slightly better for Draco, mostly because they were both unclothed. That was his favourite part of the whole thing. Medusa was masked, and yes, it made her less _ her _, but all their encounters had been entirely without dissemblance and that was refreshing in and of itself. 

He moved even more quickly this time and managed to situate himself directly behind her and lock her arms into position above her head while they remained in a standing position. It was always jarring to hear the sound of a crowd cheering whenever he had done some particularly provocative move, and that was always what tripped him up. His legs were on either side of hers, his cock was pressed up against the small of her back, and his palm had a handful of her delectable breast. It was a _ great _ position. If only there were a convenient wall around that he could press her into…

After pinching her nipple into a hard peak and forcing a squeak out of her, his hand began to drift from her breast down her slim torso to palm the top of her pubic bone. That was when she made a sound—a gaspy little sound that would have just about careened him over the edge. He glanced sideways at Medusa. Her face was contorted into an expression of—pain?—and she said audibly, “Ow.” 

He let go of her wrists at once. 

Colossal mistake. 

He realised it almost immediately, but he had lost his edge on her. She flashed him a grin now that she was free and facing him. He became a _ little _ distracted by her breasts— _ by God, those were bloody fantastic breasts _—and then she stepped into his space with her foot and popped her body into his hip. He had no idea what was happening until her right foot caught his leg, and she grabbed ahold of his right tricep, sweeping her other hand behind his head to grab his other shoulder. 

Down he went, with the breath knocked out of him, barely able to roll into the fall so that he didn't bite his tongue clean off.

She sat on his back, with both of his legs angled up and interlocked with his wrists. Somehow, his head had also been forced backwards, with her hands pulling up his chin.

His cock hurt like hell in this position. This was _ not _ideal.

And that was the end of that match.

She let his head bang down against the mat when time was called, and Draco lay there, dreading the inevitable. This was the part he hated the most and yet—and _ yet _, there was something incredibly blood-tingling about being dominated by her. That tiny bit of a thing, with so much bottled passion and anger and zest for life and for those fifteen minutes, or however much time went past, all her attention was on him in a way it had never before been out there in the real world.

This time, she flipped him over to lie on his back and straddled his chest.

_ Fuck _ . His eyes widened as he took in her position. Her fingertips scraped light, teasing lines down his chest and he groaned when her nails grazed his nipples. His cock was so hard it was practically lined up against his belly. He was sweating profusely from the possibilities whirling through his fevered brain. His hands flexed on her upper thighs and his head came up off the mat, his mouth open for a kiss. Surely, she would take pity on him. He needed this. He needed _ her. _

Medusa bent down. Draco closed his eyes, forcing his hips to stop bucking upward. He was so close…a little bit more and he could be buried in her...

—His lips brushed against something cold and smooth.

His eyelashes fluttered open and he found himself gazing in horror and resignation at something black and familiar.

It was the dildo again.

Medusa’s red, red lips formed a gloating, lopsided smile as she held it up. “Suck it, Dracula.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco starts to take this seriously; or, Draco gets ready to rumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giant thanks to Britpicker cum beta, lunamionny, for stepping in to pick through the trash here. If you haven't already, go check out her works! It's so chockful of goodies.

Perhaps it would have turned out a little better had Draco turned to Blaise for some basic instructions in wrestling. 

Unfortunately, Draco wasn't used to asking for or listening to advice. Furthermore, Blaise had also been called back to the Anatolia Highlands, where his mother hailed, and so Draco had to make do on his own. 

Mostly, his own pride refused to accept that she was always going to beat him. 

He was taller and heavier. Certainly, he wasn't in the best shape of his life and his stamina wasn't what it should have been for a man in his prime, but that was no reason to have his arse handed to him  _ every single time _ . The first two times were clear aberrations: Granger had taken him completely by surprise the first time, and then she had resorted to subterfuge the second. How tricky of her. 

It wasn't going to happen again. 

Or so he thought.

He never could fully comprehend how she could pin him so easily and not even be out of breath. 

He tried to wait out her chokehold on their third match.  _ No problem _ , he would think,  _ I can hold my breath as well as the next man _ . 

That was the time she had him sprawled facedown on the mat, with one leg angled awkwardly behind him, his head jerked so far backwards that he could barely swallow. He was sure his spine wouldn't recover completely from that. It might have been his imagination, but she seemed to actually be decreasing the time she took to pin him.

It wasn't completely because of her superior technique. Most of the problem simply lay in his eagerness to fuck her.  _ That  _ was readily apparent by how he lost their fourth match when she made him come by simply sitting on top of him near the end of the first set.

"You again?" Medusa said when she saw him that day, almost bored in the way she had her hands on her hips. 

Her hair was tied up in a big bushy half-up ponytail and she wore her signature red lipstick. She was tiny, but she walked like she owned the room, with her shoulders thrown back and her eyes glittering beneath the mask. She never behaved as though she were half-naked but as though she had on her full regalia of dress robes. In fact, Draco thought she was  _ more _ comfortable in this apparel than her prim and proper persona.

Something had changed since the first three times they had gone toe to toe in the arena and their ensuing encounters both in and out of the arena. That night, she cocked her head to the side, her attention lingering on his chest, his abs, and then to his hardening cock. There was no point in hiding it. It simply woke up at her presence. When she lifted her head, something in her expression told him that she was not completely unaffected by his physical condition.

It was the first time she had given him any kind of lingering, all-over scrutiny, and it made every inch of him tingle with awareness. If something had come of this, it was that she was now as aware of him as he was growing to be of her.

When the signal came for their first set to ensue, he wasn’t sure exactly what he expected her to do. She had an infinite variety of maneuvers and ways to end up in those positions, and whenever he tried to hold her down, she was able to wriggle her shoulders and knee herself out of his pin. 

Instinctively, he caught her when she leaped towards him, catching one leg to pull her into him. By rights, it should have pushed her off balance, but she smirked at him under that mask and hooked her knee around his hip in a strangely intimate semblance of foreplay. He grabbed her thigh and kept her pressed up against him breast to chest, sinking his nose into the hair at her temple, smelling that clean scent of freshly showered woman that lanced straight through his cock.

It felt real. It felt as though, if he closed his eyes, he could imagine them somewhere else; alone, frenzied with lust for one another, hands grappling to pull away the hindrances of clothes. When her small hand reached down into his shorts, he whimpered at how good it felt.  _ Yes please there _ and then his heavy cock was released like a club to thump against her stomach. 

She had never touched him before, had always studiously avoided touching him, but now she was holding it with an eager, greedy hand, pulling at it so that he started to feel the beads of precum leak from his tip, and his knees almost buckled under the rush of sensation that shot through his entire body. In return, his fingers eagerly pushed aside her top to bare her breast and then his head bent down to cover her hard nipple with his mouth.  _ Real _ , he thought, and not some crazed battle for sexual dominance.

They weren't wrestling at all, and there was shouting all around him, but he didn't care. He would just as soon Apparate both of them out of here, even without her consent if he could. If he had his wand on him, in another second, they could be in his bedroom. Her hand would soon stop rubbing his cock in order to guide it to her wetness. 

And she  _ was _ wet. 

Where the curves of her buttocks met, through the stretchy fabric of her knicker bottoms, he felt her slit against his fingers and it delighted him and dismayed him how small she felt. From front to back, she was slim and petite and barely a handbreadth in thickness. She couldn't hide that small gasp that escaped her as he pressed his fingers against her opening, through the fabric that covered her there. Soft, warm, pulsing with heat.

With a push against his chest, she had levered them apart to stand a few feet away from him, chest expanding and contracting with the flush of sexual excitement. He let her go, watching her to see what she would do next. This was, as ever, her show, and Draco was content to let her take the lead. He stood still where she left him, legs apart, his shorts pulled down low around his hips, his cock hard and erect above his half-mast pants. He raised the hand he had put against her to his mouth and lipped it. Their eyes met, his in challenge and hers with a little bit of turmoil in it.  _ She wanted it. Deny it if she must, but yes she did. Even if doing so frightened and confused her. _

He wasn’t supposed to be someone she was attracted to. He could read the thought clear across her features. And yet, here they were. They were going up against each other almost exclusively now, and still she arrived here without fail.

The thought emboldened him. He advanced on her, and she let him roll her to the ground. In the back of his head, a sober voice, long stifled, intruded:  _ this is not ideal, you want more than just this, here, in front of all these disgusting onlookers _ , but he pushed it aside. His fingers were finally on her cunt and her thighs were clamped around his hand, impeding his movements. She rubbed his cock fiercely, without reservation. Somehow, the thought occurred to him:  _ a little too quickly _ .

He let her, just as he then let her turn their positions over to straddle him. Her underwear was soaking and he bucked his hips upwards, straining towards her warm cunt. If not for her underwear, he could be inside her already. The sensations were intense like this—maybe it was the lights, or the fact that they were actively being cheered on, or because he finally had both hands on her breasts and the look on her face was alternately elated and determined, as though an orgasm were a task to be marked off her agenda. 

She rotated her hips above him, and by God, if she didn’t reach down to move aside the crotch of her knickers so that his penis was now lying lengthwise against her soaked slit. Her eyes rolled back in her head for just one moment before she shook her head a bit, inhaled—then she rubbed the tip of her thumb across his frenulum, leaned down, and bit his nipple...

He had experience with this. He did. He knew how to think of Professor Bint's lectures, or to imagine Headmaster Dumbledore with Professor McGonagall, all things that would curdle any young man's appetite for sex. Only none of those depressing images worked here, not with her bushy head over his chest, with one of her small fingers tracing his lips, and her other hand furiously rubbing the tip of his cock against her sopping entrance. 

His vision was filled with stars, and his nose was filled with woman. 

Nothing could have prepared him for being beneath her like this, watching her face as she gyrated above him, of experiencing this moment in person as it had played out so repeatedly in his head—

He felt the danger of it moments before it happened. His hands dug into her firm, round buttocks, trying to shift her braced thighs and  _ move her away _ —when he climaxed.

The sight of his jerking cock in her small hand, the come spurting onto her toned slim belly forced a guttural groan out of his diaphragm and he continued to come, over and over again, harder than he had come in recent years. He wanted to take that come spattered across her chest and rub it over her nipples. He wanted to scoop up lines of it and stuff it into her core. He wanted to roll her over on the mat and pound into her, his appetite only having been partially satiated. 

All that warred with a small knot of shame in the pit of his stomach, in the heat in his cheeks, in how he wasn’t able to move at all under her.

Her thighs were locked around his hips, and her knees were splayed so he couldn’t leverage them into a roll. He gazed up at her in confusion and saw that her chest was heaving, those beautiful breasts of hers moving up and down in exertion. Her breath was coming in harder than it had come before, like when she pinned him for multiple times as he tried to throw her off. Her pupils were dilated and her cunt quivered against him with need.

By reflex, an unsatisfied woman was a task yet to be completed, and Draco’s hands automatically reached up for her.

"FORCED ORGASM, FIFTEEN POINTS TO MEDUSA!" came the amplified voice, so loud that it broke through the fake bubble he had thought them in. "SET AND MATCH!"

She wasn’t smiling down at him in triumph, at least not initially. The expression in her glittering eyes were indescribable, and her cheeks were flushed, her mouth slightly open, panting for air. 

The moment broke, and she forced a smile out. “Set and match, Dracula. You were a little overeager there, weren’t you?"

There was a line of his seed that had splashed her on her neck and landed on her hair. It would be an easy thing to clean off with wandwork later, and it somehow gave him a pang to imagine her doing it with equanimity. As though they hadn’t just engaged in the most intimate act known to man. As though it were just as easy for her to wash thoughts of him away.

His reply was little more than a breath of air. "It doesn’t have to end here, Granger.”

Her eyes flashed and she jerked her palms off his chest as if he had burned her. "Watch it."

The pact. Right. That damned pact. His lips tightened and his response was sarcastic. “Sorry. I meant, fuck you, Medusa.”

This time, there was something of her old arrogance back as she tossed back her hair. “Better. But not a chance, Dracula."

Medusa dismounted him and he tried not to groan as the pert curves of her buttocks undulated above him. It went against everything he held sacred to the bedroom to let her go without satisfying her in some way. He slowly pulled himself into a sitting position, his cock flaccid but still a heavy length between his legs. Without thinking, he grabbed her wrist.  _ Wait _ , he thought, but his voice was too slow in coming. 

_ This couldn’t be it. It can’t end just like this. _

"We're done here," she said and shook him off without looking at him. Then she stalked off the mat to catcalls from the audience.

He felt more fucked over than when she had used the dildo on him.

* * *

On the one hand, it was a fucking brilliant orgasm. 

There was something to the sheer physicality of their sparring; something that the civility of Pureblood dueling often failed to deliver. Up close and personal as they grunted and heaved against each other, where he could see where her tan lines started and ended, where she freckled, and knowing the placement of the mole she had on the back of one thigh, it always felt like he came alive in the ring. Like a dam inside him was being breached, letting out all the endless frustrations and helplessness of the past few years spill out to be absorbed into the ether.

When she had held him like that, with just the two of them knowing who the other was despite the public nature of their encounter, it felt all the more intimate. It felt as significant and powerful as that first spark of magic that connected him to his first wand, lifting off on a broom for the first time at Hogwarts, when he hadn’t been certain that the school broom would respond to his command.

And like every first encounter of magic, it was addictive. He wanted  _ more _ . More of her, more of them, more  _ everything. _

Somehow, strange as it was, it felt as though his life suddenly made sense again, when even the swotty prude he used to know resorted to such measures to feel normal. 

On the other hand, the fact that she brought him to orgasm to win the match could not have been more underlined by how she left him there, striding off the arena, leaving him to face the ribbing from the audience. He had received a lot of "a little too excited there, eh, mate?" and some elbows to the side. 

It was infamous, the only forced orgasm loss in six months. 

A few women slapped him on the arse as he passed. One woman made a point of caressing his lower belly. It was humiliating and jarring, more so than what she had done to him the first two times and then when she had left him with blue balls the third and announced that there was more than one way to fuck a man.

He felt annihilated.

When he looked around for Medusa, she was nowhere in sight.

He didn't even know what he would say to her. Thank you? Thanks for the most mind-blowing orgasm I've ever had, all without getting to sink my aching cock into your sweet cunt? It  _ was _ sweet. Now he knew that for a fact.

It was just— _ fuck _ , he wanted more. He wanted real sex, not this torturous game where he could not win. It was just like in school, except with sex thrown into the fray and the fact that they weren't adolescents anymore.

* * *

He hired a trainer.

The closest to sparring in the Pureblood world was fencing with a quarterstaff, which he hadn’t practised since he was young and made to work at it for hours.

The trainer was a young Halfblood who came out to his house to evaluate Draco's level. After going through the practice obstacle course, Draco was humiliated to find that he couldn’t even make it past half an hour in the basic forms before he was panting like a dying krup. 

"What's your current routine?" Genki Kazuma asked him in perfect, if slightly accented English.

"Routine?" Draco asked.

"For exercise. You used to be a Seeker at Hogwarts, right?"

He was. He had even wanted to play Quidditch professionally at one point, which seemed ridiculous now given his current physical condition. It hadn’t been as funny in the aftermath of the war when he realised that there wasn’t much a former Death Eater was good for, not when favourable publicity was such a factor in selling seats.

"A long time ago."

"Do you still fly?"

The last time he flew was with the groupies to the Hippocampi Seven. It had taken him a lot longer to fly that distance than it would have five years ago. 

"You're in abysmal shape, Mr Malfoy. You mentioned that one of your favourite exercises was flying and riding. I’m going to put you on flying drills and I’d also recommend you take up riding again to bring you up to par."

"I really just need to be able to do up-close sparring again," Draco said, becoming testy. He hadn't paid for a trainer to be insulted repeatedly.

"The way you are now, you won't even be able to comfortably go through one match without being exhausted afterwards,” the trainer said, which Draco realised as being uncomfortably close to the truth. He had wrestled four times with a tiny woman half his size and lost every time. “Let's talk about your diet."

Training meant that he didn't have as much time for his other activities, which was fine because he had prioritised this goal—that of getting into Hermione Granger’s knickers. The racetracks were becoming shamefully neglected by him, and his cohorts there owled him to gently inquire after his well-being. He was promised propitious rates if he returned, and Draco was tempted but only momentarily. Going there after he had accomplished this would make his victory all the sweeter. It was decided.

His renewed fervour in practising meant that he was able to go at the quarterstaff for hours on end, something that improved the more time he spent on it. It also worked up a sweat, which his pursuit of Air Magic had not. His reflexes also were refined, which came in handy when he played Apparation-Catch by himself as his stamina increased. Another handy byproduct was that he was so worn out at night that he didn't spend it lasciviously thinking about someone he really shouldn't have been thinking about.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t there the following week.

“What do you mean, she’s not here?” Draco asked Gwyneth.

“I mean, people take time off,” Gwyneth replied, pulling out parchment and quill from inside her robes. Her eyes were narrowed at his tone. “It’s really supposed to be randomised, you know this, yeah? So, I’ve put you on the roster with Black Annis. I think you’d enjoy her fighting style—”

Draco didn’t even have to think twice. “No, cancel my spot today.”

“Perhaps you could have informed me ahead of time?” The deep crease between Gwyneth’s brows was etched out of irritation, and she tapped an annoyed rhythm with her quill.

Draco eyed the bit of folded up parchment in Gwyneth’s hands, wondering if it would be improper to ask to see it. After having been trounced by Medusa so many times, he finally had the perspicacity to rein himself in from testing this woman, the organiser of these fighting events. Instead, he decided to probe. “When did Medusa tell you she was cancelling?”

A beat passed before Gwyneth apparently decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to withhold information from him. “Last week. She said she couldn’t make it this week.” She tapped her quill against the parchment, which Draco could now see was made out with lines and blocks. “Listen, is this—your attendance and all that—only about shagging Medusa? Because I would encourage you to contact her for special sparring. Here, we’re all about the thrill of the unknown, the love of the fight.”

Draco nodded a few times without listening. “Enjoy the fairy wine and the—er, that other stuff. Sugar hummingbirds and whatever my house-elf sent over.” He walked backwards, gesturing at the tables set up in the orchestra pit.

“You’re only allowed two no-notice cancellations per season, Dracula,” she said louder, in order to reach him across the distance that was increasing between them.

Draco had already Apparated away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so proud of myself for updating weekly three (or four?) weeks in a row. Fingers crossed I remember to do it regularly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Draco has lots and lots and lots of smutty hallucinations but no satisfaction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my new Britpicker and beta, Lunamionny! Don't blame her if I've changed things after she went through it.

Hermione Granger, Draco had decided, was a true sadist.

This little disappearing act was part of it. She was doing it on purpose. She wasn’t even giving him the possibility of a rematch. Would it have hurt her to give in a little? 

That had never been her style. She was still a bloody sadistic fucker. Quite literally in fact. She taunted him, teased him. He knew for a fact she wasn’t immune to him. She couldn’t hide the way she inhaled as he came up from behind her, or the way she shifted her neck a bit when he breathed into her ear, to allow him access to more of her neck.

_ Or the fact that her core was soaked at the end of all their exercises. _

She wasn’t immune to him. Far from it. He would bet his entire vault on it.

Draco was so desperate and frustrated that he had even tried contacting Blaise for a run at one of his sex parlours. Unfortunately, Draco must have been infected by a wrestling bug, because when it came down to the crunch, he felt it was almost wrong for the girl to be kneeling in front of him, begging to touch him. To be so submissive to his needs and requests, despite their lack of association.

_ There had been another pair of dark brown eyes that laughed at his presumption for thinking he was going to get to fuck her. _

Draco groaned at his own stupidity with all of this. It was an embarrassingly obvious fact that he didn't want a paid prostitute. Despite his anonymous yet astoundingly public losses at the fighting ring, he was still determined to have her. Only her. Nobody else would do.

He had left and taken care of his own problem with a reel of commonly played favourite fantasies—all of which now featured Hermione Granger. 

Luckily for him, not only had he a fertile imagination, he was also aided by the  _ Prophet _ , whose favourite subject on the societal pages was Hermione’s love life. He would comb the pages for any mention of her and then wank himself to vicarious bliss over her name or any grainy photograph of her.   
  


It was his bloody obsessive personality. He was starting to think that Blaise wasn’t wrong. Maybe he  _ had _ always been a tad obsessive and this was proving his sex addict of a friend right. Oh, irony of ironies.

See, even right now, he was seeing Hermione Granger’s profile across the room of his favourite restaurant, somewhere he had never before seen her.

At first, Draco considered that he really had lost it.  _ Really need to cut down on the dosing. _ He had never had a full-on hallucination before, but perhaps it was past due.

It took half an hour of staring, watching the waiter refill her water glass—which was quite pretentious given that they could all do that on their own—and noting the way she smoothed the napkin on her lap before he belatedly realised that no hallucinations were this boring.

He finally weaved his way across the room to her, bringing his drink with him. "Who’s the lucky guy?” Draco asked, pulling out the chair opposite her. It took two tries to fully pull the chair out just so. For some reason, his hand-eye coordination was very off.

Hermione’s made-up eyes widened slightly as she took him in, then she glanced around before leaning forward and whispering fiercely, “Get out of here, Malfoy, you’re drunk.”

That was news to him. “Am I?” He had only had a few drinks, and maybe he had sampled a potion he had gotten from one of his gambling contacts. He felt perfectly normal, though.

Her tone was confrontational when she pointed out, “You’re slurring.” 

“Maybe I always slur.” Draco gave her a careful if slightly slow, given his apparently dulled reflexes, once-over. “You look all gussied up tonight, Granger. Dressing to impress?”

Her hair had been slicked back into a tight bun at the back of her head, with only a few frizzy strands sticking out. It was what she probably considered a fancy updo given that her hair was otherwise usually in a state of general chaos. Her lips were painted a demure shade of light pink, and she wore a prim, boat-necked camel-coloured dress, her outer robes put away by the waitress at the door. Even if she leaned forward, he probably wouldn’t be able to see her cleavage. 

Which was perfectly fine because he had an exact imprint of what she looked like naked in his brain.

_ There were times when she didn't look so prim and proper. Then, her hair was wild; she had no qualms about slapping him down; she gave no quarter. There was a reality to their encounters then that was different from the polite public veneer that had replaced their previous teenage animosity.  _

Civil as the public facade was, none of it felt fake to him. Everything in connection to this woman had a stinging vibrancy of urgency. Of life at its fullest.

Hermione closed her eyes slightly as though in pain, and he could see that her face had been cleverly made-up and her eyelids bore a shimmery eyeshadow. When she opened her eyes again, they flickered over his smirk and her mouth half-opened, no doubt to make some scathing, pointed comment before pursing as though he were a lost cause. “Please go."

Draco surveyed her thoughtfully, or as thoughtfully as his hazy mind permitted him. She returned his regard with flat-lipped unfriendliness and his mouth began to gradually curve upwards until he was gloating at the thought of knowing something so personal about her life. "This is a date, isn't it? How fascinating, Granger. Anyone I know?"

"No," she said brusquely. Her attention was somewhere over his shoulder, as though she wanted to find the waiter to make a request. 

It made him slightly hot under the collar.  _ Look at me, why don’t you? _

_ Look at me the way you did that day. When you saw me as a man. _

"Who is it?" He wasn't jealous or anything. That was silly. He had seen a side of her that he doubted even Harry Potter had seen. Although—she had obviously put in a lot of effort tonight and she usually looked more  _ natural _ when wrestling. 

_ Except for the red lips. That was pure provocation. She knew he couldn't keep his eyes off her mouth when it was painted the colour of sin. No wonder he was always so distracted in the arena. _

Tonight she was a study in peaches and pinks: pink lips, pink nails, that virginal peachy hue across her face matching some peach and gold studs in her dainty earlobes. Prim, proper, perfect Granger, all dolled up for someone else.

The thought made him even hotter under the collar. 

“You don't know who it is." Dismissively. One hand brushed the side of her neck; an overt tell. She was hiding something. Other than the obvious, that was.

He watched the stroke of her fingers and felt it like a caress on his own skin. In a flash, he recalled the sensation when she crawled up his body and straddled him, two slender hands smoothing down his pectorals; the feel of her slim bare waist and rounded hips under his hands, the way he almost didn't dare to touch her, for fear that he would simply explode with excitement—

_ At night, the fantasy was different. Then, he touched her all over, with teeth too eager to be gentle, fingers that trembled a little with the excitement, a cock that searched desperately for its home— _

Draco took another sip from his glass and set it down on the table, moving aside the cutlery to make room for it. He caught the waiter’s eye from across the room and gestured for another drink to be brought for Granger. She caught his peremptory signal and rolled her eyes in irritation. 

“Why can’t I know who it is? Is it a big secret? You know it’ll be all over the papers in the morning.” He hadn't really cared before who her mystery date was, but now he did. This was why one never tried to be secretive. The more you hid, the more people wanted to know.

"Look, it’s—nobody you know. Really. Or, you know what, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you about it later if you leave now.” She smiled at him, another one of her close-lipped smiles that didn’t ring true. 

It was a marked difference from the genuine look of gratitude she slanted at the waiter when he brought her the drink, and Draco watched her with heavy-lidded intensity.

"Will you?” She seemed much too accommodating all of a sudden. 

Her fingers wavered with a nervous tick as she shifted a single red rose farther away from her plate and tried to slide it under a napkin. 

Something clicked in his brain. “Oh, I see.” He leaned forward, his elbow scattering the cutlery to his left with several clanking sounds. “It’s a blind date. You’re actually on a blind date.”

“Shhh!” she replied, darting glances to either side of her. One hand fingered the stem of her water glass in an agitated fashion—

_ She held the black dildo with sure fingers, brandishing it like a weapon. Those fingers had brushed down his spine that first time, smoothed over the rounded curve of his buttocks. When he twitched at the unexpected touch there, she had slapped him teasingly. She leaned down on his back until he felt every inch of her pressed up along his spine—her breasts, her torso, the slip-slap of her plaits on his skin.  _

_ She had whispered into his ear, the breath teasing him, so close that her lips touched the shell of his ear and sent a shock straight to his groin. More than just the spell prevented him from leaving the arena, holding held him down and keeping him immobile. "Will this be your first time being a bottom?" _

Across the room, a plate of sizzling duck was served, with the waiter flambeing the skin at the table. Clapping and laughter followed. Candlelight danced over their table, casting their faces into contrasting relief. With a fair amount of effort, Draco pulled himself together. "But this is too, too quaint. So tell me about him. Will you tell him of your extracurricular hobbies?" 

Across the table, Hermione let out a barely concealed sigh of impatience. "Malfoy—"

_ —"Are you a good boy or a bad boy?" she asked, fully getting into her routine. If the immobilising spell were off right now, he'd flip her over so fast she'd get a whiplash. Then he'd pull her legs apart and plow into her—again and again until she begged for mercy. Draco, she'd say. I'll be good. I'll be so good to you— _

Draco rotated his head, hearing the tension-relieving crack of his spine. Then he leaned forward, his buttons clinking against the plate in a breach of etiquette, his torso squashing the intricately folded napkin. "Will you tell him that you like to strip down to your bare skin and wrestle like a maniac for the right to  _ fuck _ ?" He drew out his words more and more until the last word dangled in the air like a smoke ring, with the ending consonant a pop of sound.

Her fingers were tapping on the tablecloth now as though counting down the seconds to his departure. "Go away, Malfoy."

"Are you going to tell him that I've seen your naked body? Or that I've kissed you on your pretty little breasts—"

"Go away!"

"—or the fact that I know exactly how you look down there?"

"Tell him and you die, Malfoy. Or, at the very least, I’ll be at liberty to inflict some dreadful pain." Her eyes were spitting fire at him now, ablaze with light from the candles. It burnished her all over, making her look as golden as a bronzed statue.

_ She was looking at him now. _

He smiled and waited a beat. They stared at each other over the centerpiece, a floating ball of wax with several candle wicks lit through it. "Why is it that you need a rose to identify yourself? Couldn't you simply have written 'Saviour of the Saviour of England' on your profile?"

Hermione blinked, undoubtedly taken aback by this sudden change of subject. “I—well, I didn’t want him to know who I was before he saw me...in case.”

He scoffed. “Nervous? You? Who the fuck would turn you down?” It made him a little angry to see this side of her. When had she ever been uncertain of herself? With him, never. She always looked like she was ready to spit nails—directly into his face.

She didn’t look any happier with her slip of the tongue. “What are you doing here anyway? Don’t you have anything better to do than to harass me?”

His eyes didn’t leave hers as he spoke. “You know what I want. You want it too. Admit it.”

Under the table, the toe of his shoe touched her foot. For a moment, she didn’t move, and an undefinable expression flickered over her face. After a long moment, she wet her lips and looked around the restaurant. He waited with bated breath.

“Skip this,” Draco said, his lips hardly moving as he willed her to know exactly what he was thinking about. “Come home with me. I’ll let you pin me all night long.” There was a small smile playing on his mouth as he maintained eye contact with her. 

_ —A wide, satin-covered bed dominated the room. Hermione’s upper body was pressed face down on top of it t, her hips curved over the edge and heeled feet still on the floor. He traced a light hand across the nape of her neck before brushing his fingers teasingly down her back, caressing each ridge of her supple spine before stopping at the top of her arse.  _

_ She wore the short shimmery shift dress from the silent auction. With a flip of his hand, he exposed her buttocks, bare but for the scrap of fabric she had worn the first time he had ever seen her at the arena. Her hips were shaking infinitesimally with the strain of staying still under his teasing ministrations.  _

_ He ran one finger under the thin waistband of her knickers before following the line of her cleft of her cheeks all the way down to where the heat was. Wet, but not wet enough.  _

_ Still holding her down with her cheek pressed against the bedspread, he knelt behind in a position of supplication and worship to lay a slow, soft kiss behind her knee. She wore stockings, like the kind that the women at Blaise’s sex parlours often favoured. Like the kind that his other dates displayed for him with wanton boldness.  _

_ He breathed a line of open-mouthed, lingering kisses all up the back of her thigh to where her buttock met her leg. Then he moved sideways and blew gently over her covered slit. Her entire body contracted and she drew in a sharp breath that reverberated through the bed. He gripped her hip, holding her still, holding her eyes as she looked back over her shoulder at him. Then he slowly, finger by finger, pulled the crotch of her knickers aside— _

Draco suddenly realised that in his fantasy, she was in the same position she forced on him that first time they sparred in the arena. His fantasy was so vivid that it took him a while to return to the present. He gradually registered the table between them. The restaurant. Her prim and proper outfit. Those pink lips.

Something in her face as she stared at him made him think that she wasn’t entirely unaffected by the images he was projecting out to her. Then she blinked, and the moment passed. “You’re breaking the pact.”

“Fuck the pact,” he said, his arms now outstretched so that he was gripping the edges of the table only a foot away from her plate. In another second, the desire to overturn the table in order to get to her might just overtake him. His hands were trembling imperceptibly.

Hermione looked unimpressed. She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. Her voice was barely loud enough to be heard. “Do you know why I go to an underground wrestling den? It’s to prevent things like this from happening.  _ This _ is my real life—” she pointed down at the table, but he knew she meant more than just this blind date “—and I don’t appreciate your efforts to expose me. You may know a little bit more about me than I’d like, but you made a pact to  _ leave it alone.  _ This—” she gestured between the two of them “—counts as breaching the pact.”

He felt compelled to correct her. “This has nothing to do with the pact. This is between you and me, off the table.”

“There  _ is  _ no you and me.”

“There can be.”

She cocked her head to the side. “ _ You _ want to fuck  _ me _ .” It was a statement masquerading as a question.

Despite her disbelieving tone, Draco almost wanted to throw up his hands at her obliviousness.  _ How _ had she been praised for the last two decades for being so clever when it had taken her this long to understand him? “Give the lady a prize for Legilimency.” 

She scoffed, clearly still not convinced. “What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch. Unless you mean a  _ really _ good time until we both fall down from exhaustion and dehydration.” He smirked. "But not to worry. I have plenty of potions and drinks on hand."

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “And just so you know,  _ Malfoy _ —” she made his name sound like a curse “—I  _ could _ already have had you anytime I wanted to. Remember?”

“Are you afraid when there’s no audience?” he asked, and then swiveled his head slowly and pointedly, looking around them. Diners were seated at discrete intervals throughout the restaurant, chatting and laughing, going about their meal and not paying them the least bit of attention.

She laughed at that, and his eyes lingered on her mouth. “Oh, I’m not afraid of you. Has it ever occurred to you that I’m just not interested? The men in my life might treat me like fragile porcelain, not meant for anything more strenuous than research, but at least they cherish me. You, on the other hand, see me as nothing more than an animal fit for a round of anonymous sex. Tell me, is it the mask that appeals to you? Because that way I seem even more dehumanised to you?”

“I don’t—”

“You spent our entire childhood belittling me, which was somewhat understandable, given that your heinous family had obviously cultivated in you a tendency to bully others. So I beg your pardon if I don't believe in the sincerity of your current, very empty words. You always have an agenda.”

His smile faded. They were doing this now, were they? A decade of complete silence on the subject of their past enmity; several times since then that they could have had this out, hexes and all, somewhere relatively private. Now they had to be in his favourite restaurant, with the smoke from the candlelight making the atmosphere fuzzy around the edges. All of a sudden, he felt too unsteady for this confrontation, so he relied on snideness instead. “It's called adolescence, Granger. Is the concept foreign to you? It might as well have been.”

Where was the tantalising image of her naked body when he needed it? Imagine your adversaries naked and willing indeed. Now all he could see of her were flinty eyes staring over the centerpiece at him. In the romantic glow of the place, with her eyes kohled, she could almost be wearing a mask. The girly pinks and peaches seemed a joke now that she was so confrontational. 

“An entire history of misdeeds and prejudice banished under the heading of immaturity?” She looked savagely amused. “That’s an extremely convenient excuse.”

Her words shouldn’t have gotten under his skin. That was exactly how his lawyers had sold his sorry tale and kept him out of prison when many others hadn’t been so lucky. It was how he always played off his past to the women he dated. Only Hermione Granger didn’t believe in immaturity and bad choices, did she? She was born perfect, this anomaly of a Muggleborn woman. He leaned in, his eyebrows raised in challenge. “It’s not an  _ excuse _ . Don’t you think I’m allowed to change my ways?”

“Oh, you’re allowed,” Hermione said, her voice silky as she sat forward in her seat, her hands braced on the tabletop inches from his. She might have been indulging in sweet nothings, except her expression indicated his character was going to be ripped to shreds. “I just don’t think you  _ have _ . I think you’re the same self-entitled, manipulative person that both your parents were. Always landing on your feet no matter what. Wasn’t it so convenient for your parents to defect at the eleventh hour?”

It wasn’t the first time he had heard this, and yet—

It had never stung so much. Here it was, coming from a woman he fancied; who stared at him with so much condemnation. If he had been holding his wine glass, the stem would have snapped in half by now. His tone was bitter as he faced off against her. “So what does it take to live up to your standards, up there on your golden pedestal? I've had to readjust everything I've ever believed in. Tell me, how long did it take for you to adjust to the wizarding world? Was it overnight? Did it come to you in a snap of the fingers and suddenly you understood everything about this world?”  _ Why was he being punished for ideals and beliefs drilled into him from the day he was born? _

He was on the wrong side now, when he had been right his whole life, just as she was now a victor where once she’d been ostracised.

Weren't they just two opposite sides of the coin, after all? If he could see it now, why couldn't she?

Her lips were a thin line, but he saw at a glance that she understood the point he was making. “You really have that self-pity act down, don’t you? Should I feel sorry for you and pretend that we’re friends? We’re not friends, Malfoy. I think people need to be punished according to their actions. In the Muggle world, there are people who do the things that the Death Eaters did, and there’s no excuse for it. People don’t forgive such things, ever.”

That made him laugh, a low, unamused laugh that caused her to narrow her eyes at him in perplexity.

“What I’ve seen, Granger—what I’ve done—do you think I could excuse it, even if I tried?” His breath was like ice. “After I Imperio’d that family of Muggles into killing each other, do you think there’s absolution for that?” 

He caught her arm across the table when she looked like she was about to speak. For a moment they were locked in a silent battle over the tabletop; with her unwilling to make a scene and him wanting a show of power when once he had felt so powerless. It was all a facade, he knew—at any time, she could have hexed off his hand—but for that brief few seconds, he relished the power of her slim wrist in his firm grip.

“There’s a reason that dark wizards always search out immortality; it’s because they’re afraid of what comes after. No matter what, the things you do always come back to haunt you. It’s only in oblivion that they fade away.” He let go of her arm as though throwing away a used scroll. “I don’t fucking need your forgiveness, Granger.”

Except that he did. 

It was just now as he denied it that he realised how long he had yearned for approval from someone like her. From her.

He had rendered her silent with his low, venomous speech. Her lips were working, but no words came out as she stared at him. 

His fingers curled on the tabletop, the tablecloth creasing beneath his hand.

“Have I  _ scared  _ you?” Draco said. “To think that it started out as a very civil invitation for mutual benefit, which you’ve turned into a twisted plot you’ve cooked up in your own head. You’ve now made yourself guilty of the very thing you’ve accused me of doing, of labeling you by your blood. Now, the Purebloods are evil, aren’t they, in this inane postwar world where every word they say could be cause for being brought before the Wizengamot. Anyone even vaguely connected with a Death Eater is reviled and hated—even those who were branded against their will.”

She rubbed at her arm where he had grabbed her, as though she could scrub off his touch. “You don’t scare me, Malfoy. And you’re wrong. This world is always going to belong to the Purebloods, no matter how long I’m here. Just because Muggleborns aren’t considered animals anymore hardly means anything to anyone. You prove it every time you come to taunt me about my secrets.”

Draco should have cut his losses. Even if everything he knew about women indicated she desired him,  _ she  _ wasn't admitting it to herself because it boiled down to some irrelevant issue of trust. Rejection was a way of life. He could easily find a replacement and have an easier time of bedding her instead of this impossible woman.

Except that he just didn't want a replacement.

Or maybe, just maybe, this talk had been building for over two decades.

That was how he rationalised his reaction to himself of how he failed to get up from his chair and bid her farewell. Instead he leaned in. “A friendly chat between former classmates is considered harassment now? Have we become queen of all that we survey?"

Most of the time, Draco kept himself from thinking about the past easily enough. It was only when he ventured out of his seclusion and realised that the world had carried on, but that  _ Death Eater _ was still treated as a swear word, he'd reflected to himself that life was a joke. Where was the father who had convinced him his fealty would result in the greatest future ever known to man?

Right. Lucius Malfoy was gone. As was his mother, who had been happy enough to be with a Death Eater until she realised such a commitment would invade every last centimetre of her mind.

The words poured out of him like a torrent. "Are you complaining about your situation in life, Granger? Any time you want, you can scurry away into the Muggle world and disappear forever. Where do you propose I go, so that I can start all over again? And I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about a whole way of life, gone after this war. They talk about healing and forgiveness—what about the children of Death Eaters who haven’t done anything wrong? What about their Squib children who depended on their relatives for a livelihood?"

Here Hermione Granger sat, the greatest reformer of their time, and she placed centaur lives above the children of her own kind. She had no idea what befell them, when a whole group of people were summarily rounded up and jailed or executed. 

"Do you know where they are now, since you preach so much about atonement? Those Squibs that nobody cares about, not even the side of the Light? They don’t know anything about the Muggle world, and all of us are forbidden from crossing over anyway. Nobody employs them, so they turn to the world’s oldest profession. To you, sex is just a game. To them, it’s their livelihood."

It was a bitter insight into their world that Draco had not been aware of as a child. He hadn't been able to face going back to the Squib den Blaise liked so much and had, in fact, ripped into Blaise for going there. Time and again, Draco had raised the issue of consent and freedom to Blaise, who considered the matter inconsequential in the face of his sexual prowess. 

“What do you know about choices or doing things that go against a lifetime of beliefs? Of changing your lifestyle in a world that refuses to let you change? Yes, I’m aware I’m one of the lucky ones—except there are more than a dozen places where my money’s no good. It’s a small world, Granger, and so much smaller for Purebloods. But you don’t know anything about that, do you? Your whole life has been an exercise in freedom, including your present. You're drowning in the possibilities of both worlds, yet you complain about a few men who can't see past their own noses. Who ever told you you were one of the cleverest of our generation? Don’t believe your own press, Granger. You're a fucking fool.”

Right then and there, he didn’t know what he was thinking or saying. Words were coming out of his mouth that he hadn’t planned to say; that were surely irrelevant to anything between them. He didn’t need her to understand him. Understanding wasn’t conducive to a night of mutual pleasure, and yet her supercilious attitude had forced all the words he had buried long ago to come tumbling out. 

Draco stood abruptly, pushing away from the table.

“Wait—”

Too bloody late for that, Draco thought, and made a sound of disgust. Whether it was at himself or her or at the whole of life, he didn’t know. He turned on his heel and nearly ran into a tall figure of a man. 

“I beg your pardon,” the other man said, adjusting his lapel and the inevitable red rose tucked into his front pocket.

Draco didn’t look back as he made his way to the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I've been so regular at this posting weekly thing. Thanks for reading, guys! Hopefully you don't mind that Draco is still super unfulfilled.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sobriety's already gaining Draco a few points...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the missed update last week, guys. I was fully immersed in the Love Fest 2020 and pumped out fourteen (14!) fics in two weeks. Check them out if you'd like to look at some other genres and pairings I'm into (shameless self-plug here). But hey! Here's a super long chapter for this week, even though it's smut-less.
> 
> Brit-picked and beta'd by Lunamionny!

Draco could have kicked himself in retrospect. Had he really been so upset at being rejected by Hermione Granger that he’d lost his temper and began spouting about inconsequential things? 

Yes. Yes, he had.

Well, that absolutely did it. No dosing unless he planned to stay in for the entire night. He shouldn’t have recalled any of it, and yet the mind was a mysterious thing. What would have been blacked out and forgotten in another mind was emblazoned in his. He had made a blasted fool of himself, showing her how much he wanted her, desired her, only to be scorned out of hand and have his past thrown in his face. She was a sadistic bitch.

She did have a point or two about his past. He had to concede that at the very least.

His past did not paint him in any sort of a good light, and he knew it. 

Only, how did one begin to make amends for a lifetime’s actions borne of mistaken beliefs? Draco did not know either. Hiding, or pretending it had never happened, was something he excelled at doing. It was something that most people were happy to go along with. As long as he didn’t make waves, nobody pointed fingers at him.

He was keeping out of the way, wasn’t he? He was fucking off to where all the Purebloods belonged in this brave new world. It wasn’t enough, apparently, not for the likes of Hermione Granger, who still considered him dirt beneath her feet. How ironic it all was.

Draco dragged himself to the Board of Governors meeting at Hogwarts that took place every year, one month before school started. Unfortunately for everyone, the seats on the Board were set in stone—literally. The last war had wiped out enough of the surviving members that he was needed to make quorum. The last time he had skived off, he had been inundated with owls and surprise visits for the whole of the following week. It was just one of those delightful things that Purebloods who had been around since the Founding needed to put up with.

It was usually interminable, particularly since Draco had no children and no interest at all in Hogwarts. Presumably, the school had been rebuilt and all that since the war; still he had preferred to ignore it entirely, new paint notwithstanding. His duties there were another one of those unending ironies in his life—the fact that the man who had been single-handedly responsible for bringing about the school’s destruction was now placed in charge of making sure it ran like clockwork.

As he lounged in the insufferably hard stone seat bearing the Malfoy insignia, he gazed at one of the many empty seats in the room—that belonging to the Black family. Technically, he held both votes in tandem, which was just about the strangest part of the laws of the wizarding world. What was so wonderful about an institution that allowed Death Eaters to hold seats on the Board anyway? As far as he was concerned, they had done just fine without him for most of its existence and would probably continue to do so.

Today it was doubly torturous, given his complete sobriety. It wasn’t that he had given up dosing because of that sadistic reformer—she-who-should-not-be-named—but rather that he didn’t want anyone to have the chance to have a go at him when he was less than fully armored and cognizant, as he has been during his last ignominious confrontation. In between the shuffling around and the standing up and sitting back down, Draco busied himself with recounting all the stalactites inside the dank cavern that was their meeting room. Just to check that it was the same number as the last time he had occasion to be here. When he was finished with that, he started with the stalagmites. He idly drew on his stone seat with a scraggly piece of chalk.

He then amused himself with doodling the likeness of the man across from him—Tiberius McLaggen, who Lucius Malfoy had credited as being "not as ambitious as his talents decreed," but whose family's actions had, in the end, been the cleverer choice. There were about a dozen Pureblood families in Britain who had steadfastly remained neutral in the last war, and they were the ones who were at the top of the food chain now, where once the Malfoys and Blacks had ruled. 

Draco kept mostly out of their way.

A quarter of the way through the agenda, someone Draco recognised opened the heavy doors and wove his way to the empty seat next to Draco. 

Draco looked up with surprise, although the intrusion was not unwelcome, given his state of complete and utter boredom. "Nott." He eyed the insignia on the stone seat next to him.  _ Farquhart.  _ To Draco's knowledge, that seat had been empty for the entire time he had been required to attend these abominable meetings.

Theo Nott nodded at Draco before leveraging himself up into the stone seat. "Not going for comfort, were they? Awfully cold in here as well." Theo’s nose screwed up as he sniffed the humid air.

"Since when were you Scottish?" Draco asked in a bored aside.

"Since my maternal grandfather apparently re-owned my mother on his deathbed. Given that it's a Scottish title, daughters can inherit, and so here I am. Nick of time really, since I was homeless at that point."

Theo had been disowned by his father when he refused to take the Dark Mark. The Nott family estate completely disappeared from the Pureblood Registry when the patriarch died, as most of the older estates were tied to the land by magic. 

"How's Scotland?"

Theo seemed to consider the question seriously before he replied, "Drafty, I suppose. But I assume the hunting's good, whatever that's about. Some strange neighbor of mine keeps on inviting me to go hunting with him. Telling me that it's the duty of every Scotsman—agh!" Theo ended on a gasp. "There he is, across from us."

The stone seats were arranged in a circle and Draco didn't even have to look to know who Theo was talking about. "That's Tiberius McLaggen."

"Good Lord, I wonder if he followed me here."

"He was here before you," Draco said. 

"Hmm. How long are these meetings usually? I was initially quite thrilled to come into property, but I have to say these obligations are rather wearing."

In unison, they all clambered off the stone seats and raised their right hands, then their left hands, and murmured " _ cuntas ar fad orthu _ ” before returning to their seats.

"Was that a vote for something?" Nott whispered to him.

"No, we have to do that every so often so that quorum is preserved for the duration of the meeting. Apparently, they consider sleeping to be a failure to make quorum."

"Well, that's just bollocks."

Draco agreed, though privately he was considering what tall tale to tell his former classmate to convince him to come to all these future meetings just so Draco wouldn't have to. With the addition of the newest Farquhart member, quorum could be maintained even without Draco’s presence.

"Number thirty-one on the agenda. Werewolf Progeny Acceptance Policies."

Everyone in the room groaned. 

"Didn't we strike this down last year?" someone raised their voice in a familiar and querulous strain of complaint. Gamaliel Hautbois, who had been on the board since before Lucius Malfoy was born and kept track of every single motion raised. He was gazing all around him through wire-rimmed spectacles, and he had even conjured up what Draco assumed was the parchment of all the were-related proposals since the beginning of time.

"Ah, they made some changes." The chairwizard squinted down at the paper in his hand before lighting his wand. Anson Cononwennesley (pronounced Consley) was an inoffensive man of some fifty years. His ability to agree with everyone made him the most hated man on the Board and thus the one unanimously chosen to head the meetings. "It was  _ werewolves _ last year, and now it's just their progeny."

"And the year before that, wasn't it werefolk?" Hautbois continued, his voice thin and reedy and suspicious. Draco rolled his eyes, wondering if he could leave now and not be inundated with quorum failure complaints later. He would have to do it quickly before the same notion occurred to Theo, or maybe Theo was still new to all these procedures and could be hoodwinked. “And before that, sentient beasts? When will this end?”

"Ah," Cononwennesley said. "Well, given that the sponsor is a war hero, the proposal has— _ hem _ —got traction and—"

"Motion to strike," said Hautbois, raising his hand in the air.

"Seconded," Draco said. His hand was already in the air and Theo's, after a sideways glance at Draco, slowly rose as well.

"—there is a witness this time and well, given that the sire received a posthumous award— _ haw _ —if we could just…"

The door to the chamber opened and Draco froze in his stone chair.  _ Why in the name of the seven hells could he never escape from this woman? _

"Point of order, point of order!" Hautbois was calling with rising anger.

Draco's hand fell, and Theo, after a frowning look around, also lowered his.

"The motion to strike should be voted on! We had a second!"

Cononwennesley made a point of looking around. "I didn't hear anything."

Draco didn't say anything. Theo leaned over the wide armrest and whispered, "Who's that? Do we often get attractive women needing our votes?"

"Chair calls Hermione Granger to present witness in support of her proposal."

Hautbois was muttering "this is outrageous" loud enough for everyone to hear.

"That cannot be Hermione Granger,” Theo said, his voice lowered as though talking to himself. He turned to Draco and made a vague gesture in the air. "Didn't she have hair like the Devil's Snare?"

Hermione Granger had a little boy in tow with her, and she was half-bent, whispering to him as he walked into the room. At first, he seemed cowed by the cavernous appearance of the room and the fact that they were all sitting about three feet up from the ground. The stalactites and stalagmites were also intimidating in certain light, with some patterns looking like grotesque faces in the stone.

“Well?” said Cononwennesley, drawing out the word in the way of some adults when speaking to young children. On his face was an expression of supreme benignity. “What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

Immediately, the little boy’s hair turned into the exact same shade of brown as Cononwennesley’s.

Murmurs sounded through the room. “How rare,” someone said. “A Metamorphagus.”

“No, it’s just a trick of the light,” said another.

The little boy looked from one speaker to another, and this time, not only his hair changed colours but his facial features shifted as well—his nose grew shorter and longer as his chin squared and narrowed and his eyebrows thickened.

“This is Edward Remus Lupin,” Hermione Granger said, one hand on the boy's shoulder. Even though her hand never left his shoulder, she straightened and lifted her chin to address the men five feet up in the air all around her. “He is the son of the Auror Nymphadora Tonks and former Hogwarts professor Remus Lupin. As you can all see, he has already exhibited signs of being a Metamorphagus like his mother.” 

Draco lounged against one side of his stone seat, resting his elbow against the side of the excessively high armrest, his mouth obscured by his fingers.

Hermione looked around the room. Her gaze didn’t stop on him. From where she stood and given the height of the seats, he knew it was probably impossible for her to see her audience. 

“Both Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin died in the Battle of Hogwarts during the last war fighting against Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. I have attached Remus Lupin’s biographical information as Attachment A so that you can see for yourself his history and how he came to be infected with the Werewolf Disease. It is my hope that the Board reconsiders the ban against Werefolk and their progeny in the applicants seeking to enter Hogwarts as students.”

“Your proposal simply states that you wish  _ progeny _ were accepted, isn’t that so?” said McLaggen. “Not werefolk.”

Draco smirked into his hand. Classic Granger. He could guess that all of the petitions in previous years had been sponsored by her, and that this year, she had even carted little Lupin with her in order to sway the judges. Back in the day, her persistence in belabouring a point had driven the professors batty. These governors had no idea who they were up against.

“I brought Teddy—Edward—here with me today to bring this issue to the Board. There were many casualties during the last war. Recently, it came to my attention that there were witches who suffered...advances from werewolves during that time.” She paused. 

Draco wasn’t sure, but it seemed for a moment as though her eyes were searching out someone in the darkness. Not him, surely.

She continued. “It was a terrible time, and these women and their children should not be punished for something that occurred as a result of war and violence, or because of who their fathers are. This ban is overly restrictive in nature and does not take into account exigencies—”

“We can see at a glance that Edward Lupin exhibits talents beyond the norm, probably inherited from his mother. Has he exhibited any sign of the Turn?”

“The Turn sometimes does not occur until pubescence, as I’ve included in my research, attached as Attachment B in the folio—”

“So does this mean that little Edward may suddenly not only be a Metamorphagus but exhibit werewolf tendencies once he turns twelve or thirteen?”

Hermione’s voice was sharp as she replied, “Given that all werewolf children were killed prior to 1879, when the Greyback clan came into power, we have insufficient evidence to answer this question. Although the Ministry has yet to address this unavoidable disadvantage on a public scale, Edward Lupin’s family is willing to finance his—uncertain condition so that he will never be at a loss for Wolfsbane, thus rendering the issue of student safety moot.”

Tonks. Lupin. Draco realised with a start that Edward Lupin was his relative. It shouldn't have been that surprising as Draco was related to quite a number of people, most of whom were dead. Was it his imagination, or was Hermione peering up at each of the seats as though searching for him?

Not that she would expect him to help her. Nor would he.

“I’m confused,” Hautbois said. “Is your proposal for werewolf progeny or for little Edward? Because the procedures for each are very different.”

“Both,” she replied shortly and then covered up her snappiness with a belated but very civil smile. “If werewolf progeny were accepted, then Edward would be included in that group.”

“Currently, it’s on a case by case basis,” said Cononwennesley in answer to no one’s question.

Draco didn’t think he was imagining the slight edge to Hermione’s voice as she continued to speak. “Edward happens to already be a very gifted individual from a gifted family, but there are other children currently barred who have much to gain from an education at Hogwarts.”

“Hogwarts was established for those exceptionally magically gifted,” said Hautbois. “Are we to accept substandard students now?”

Draco and Theo rolled their eyes at one another.

“I seemed to recall one or two substandard students,” Theo murmured without moving his lips. “Backed with daddy’s money.”

“More than just one or two,” Draco replied in the same low voice.

“Nurture, not nature. There are children who develop later, but are no less gifted. They deserve a chance—”

“We decide who gets a chance, young lady,” said Hautbois, looking every bit a crotchety old man as he rapped his agenda against his stone armrest.

Hermione visibly bit back her words. “I meant, it behooves our country as a whole to nurture individuals who can then—”

“Motion to vote,” McLaggen cut in.

“Seconded,” Hautbois said quickly.

Cononwennesley looked around as though waiting for someone to disagree, but then another voice also seconded, and he sighed. “Please step outside, Ms Granger, and thank you.”

Hermione looked like she wanted to say something else, but she nodded and tugged on Edward’s hand before she made her way to the door. Her shoulders were square and high.

“How are you voting?” Theo whispered.

Draco didn't hesitate. “For. She made a good point.”

“Which was?”

“There’s no reason to punish the children for the father’s sins.”

Draco saw Theo’s frown in the dim lighting. “Did she say that?”

“All for?” Cononwennesley called, and they all made the necessary taps with their wands. The stalagmites rose from the floor to signal the voting, just as the stalactites would drop from the ceiling for the nays. “All against? The nays have it.”

“Motion for recess,” said Hautbois, who once again wore his customary look of grumpiness.

“Seconded,” Draco said, already rising from his seat.

“Oh, now you second,” Hautbois mumbled, shooting a death glare at Draco.

“Where are you going?” Theo asked.

Draco shot him a look and Theo raised his shoulders and hands as though miming innocence. “Where  _ is _ the loo around here anyway?” Theo asked.

Draco ignored him and let himself down from the seat. Some of the other governors also headed in the same direction.

Outside, he saw Hermione’s head inclined towards Cononwennesley's. He knew the second that Cononwennesley told her the outcome because her shoulders sank and she nodded, a dejected dip of her chin. Her knuckles were tight on the little boy’s hand. He was staring all around him, and Draco followed his gaze. 

The Board convened in a rock quarry near Hogwarts. The entrance was where the golden egg part of the Triwizard Competition had taken place when Draco was a student. He still remembered it vividly. Outside, there was still a long piece of dried shed skin from one of the dragons. He remembered when he’d been a little boy and thought dragons were one of the most amazing animals in the world. So many of the truly dangerous animals were kept on reserves and seldom seen even in Travelling Wizarding Zoos.

As he watched, the little boy wandered over to the jagged cliff wall where four long scratches had been etched into the stone. Edward traced the marking with one slow finger, without touching the wall, before he twisted his head around to see if Hermione had seen him.

“That one was made by a Hungarian Horntail,” Draco said to him from the other side of the entrance to the cavern. “Have you ever seen one?”

Edward jumped and swiveled his face to Draco’s, holding his hands behind his back in the way that boys did when caught doing something wrong. Draco pretended not to notice, keeping his hands in his pockets.

"It came here during the Triwizard Competition.”

“I know. My Uncle Harry fought one.”

Draco froze for a moment. Of course. Of course the little boy would know all about dragons from his extended family of wizards. He was an orphan in name only. He was surrounded by possibly more aunts and uncles than Draco himself had. Less mental ones too, to a degree.

“Did you ever fight one?” the boy asked curiously.

“No,” Draco said. “But I’ve seen them fight.”

“In—Romania?”

Draco huffed a laugh. “No. Not on a reserve. This one was—slightly more illegal.”

The boy gave Draco a penetrating gaze, taking in his outfit. “Aren’t you a Governor?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be good?”

“And where did you come by that conclusion?”

“Aunt Hermione. She said I should respect the Governors.”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re telling me  _ not _ to respect you?” Edward looked curious despite himself.

“You shouldn’t respect people just because of their title,” Draco said, reflecting that saying so went against everything he had once been taught. Still, one learned a few things along the way, and Draco was convinced this was one of them. “Surely you know that already. How old are you?”

“Eleven,” Edward replied and shrugged in a way that was more adult than Draco expected. “I look small for my age.”

“I was small for my age, too,” Draco said. “You’ll grow.”

There was a wary hopefulness in the boy's eyes that reminded Draco of himself at the same age. “How do you know?”

“It’s a Black thing,” Draco said.

“I’ve heard of that name.”

“I expect you have.”

“They’re all dead though.”

“Yes, they are.”

“—Teddy!”

“I have to go,” Edward said and gave Draco a look that indicated he wished he could ask him more questions. He ran off without another word.

Someone had come to pick up Edward Lupin. For a moment, Draco thought he was hallucinating and seeing his mother. The woman, too, did a double-take, which was when Draco realised it wasn’t his mother. She never would have done anything so plebian. 

Draco remained stony-faced. Andromeda Tonks, his aunt. He had never spoken to her in his life. She had also never attempted to contact him. To all intents and purposes,  _ she _ was the last surviving Black, except that she had been struck off from the family tree, rendering all her progeny Nameless. Furthermore, she was a Black, and Blacks did not allow their women to hold political office or title to any sort of property at all. Bellatrix had been the exception to the rule by gainsaying protocol. Had she lived and not gone insane, Draco had no doubt she would have wreaked significant damage to old Pureblood ways.

He turned away.

“Wait, Draco!” 

It was Hermione who hailed him. She spoke a few words to Edward and Andromeda. The latter nodded in response and gave Draco one piercing, lingering look before tugging her grandson with her across the gorge and off Hogwarts grounds. 

Hermione came hurrying through the corridor to him, slowing only to duck her head under a lower part of the ceiling. “Hey,” she said, as though they were friends.

_ We’re not friends, Malfoy _ .

She hadn’t lied, but it had stung. Far more than he had expected it would.

Draco didn’t say a word now and she seemed to pause at his reticence. He supposed in the few times they had met recently, he hadn't exactly been a soul of restraint.

“Listen,” she said and stopped. She held out her hands in a conciliatory palms-up gesture and then quickly withdrew them again. “I’m—Look, thank you for voting for my proposal even though it didn’t pass.”

“Why do you assume that I did?”

She made a gesture that indicated that this was all fairly self-explanatory. “I did my research on the Board before I came. I know how everyone on the Board has voted on my proposals in past years. And I also know you haven’t attended the meetings until recently when your parents...” she trailed off.

He didn’t finish her sentence for her.

"So I know—that is, I knew when the votes against didn't change in number, but the ayes did. And this was—despite everything that had..." she trailed off again.

Silence. 

Draco was at a loss for words; even sarcasm was failing him. Damned sobriety. "I didn't do it for you," he said finally. Her rejection had rankled. It hadn't surprised him, but he hadn't expected such a heated discourse on what a heinous miscreant he still was. Lovely. It had put paid to the question of what others still thought of him. And his life had been proceeding along so peachily, too.

"That's why I'm thanking you," she said, a bit of steel reentering her voice. Then she sighed and continued in a softer voice, looking behind her to make sure they were still some distance away from any onlookers, “I shouldn’t have said what I did."

"Which part? The part where you said I was still a bully and couldn't be trusted because of my heinous upbringing?"

Hermione gazed down at the ground for a moment while he waited. "I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean to speak ill of the dead."

“Didn’t you?” Skepticism coloured his tone. He quirked an eyebrow here, throwing their last encounter back at her.

“Yes, I just...I had a very terrible week at work and I said a lot of things that I shouldn’t have. You seem to—I don’t know! You seem to bring out the absolute worst in me. I don’t--how do you expect me to act when you…” She gestured slightly between the two of them before looking away, fidgeting and shifting on her feet. She appeared to be having have trouble forming entire sentences. and it led her to throw up her hands in frustration. “What  _ is _ this, Malfoy? Is this your new game?”

Hermione sounded genuinely frazzled and agitated. He didn’t speak for a very long time, past the time that he realised her question wasn’t rhetorical.

Throughout the silence, she snuck peeks at him, and when he didn’t react, she sighed and scuffed the ground with the toe of her shoe, a black work heel. “I just wanted to thank you for bringing to my attention about the Squibs and their...well, their plight. To be honest, I hadn’t thought of them at all.”

Neither did most of the wizarding world, except for select Pureblood families. For them, it was a responsibility and a shame that they could not delegate elsewhere, especially when the Muggle world was closed off to them and theirs as a precaution against future malice. 

_ After all, once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater. _

Bitterness kept him silent.

"You—" She seemed to be having the same problem he was, that of finding the right words to say, except she was actively trying to overcome her issues. "I suppose," she said, picking her words very carefully, "that I overstepped as well. I grew up not knowing anything about magic and it is a leap of faith, everything that I learned. Only I knew it within me that it was real somehow. I suppose it'll be even more different for you, to be able to see someone like me as anything but an animal."

He was staring into the distance as she spoke, trying to keep his pulse steady when it threatened to jump all over the place. He wanted her to understand what he couldn't put into words, he wanted to leave right then; he wanted to kiss her, he also wanted to throttle her for making him face any of this unpleasantness. "You're not an animal,” he said finally. “I don't see you as one, I can promise you that."

Her lips indented slightly at one corner and she shrugged. "The war's over, but Muggleborn are still reviled, you know? Sometimes it makes me see red and I just—sometimes it feels good to don a mask and give someone a proper thrashing." 

"And then fuck the bloody life out of them?"

"I...yeah. Yes, that's how it feels."

"Then... onwards, Granger. You should be able to deal with your demons any way you see fit. That's the luxury of freedom that Purebloods never have." It was strange to be so envious of someone else and at the same time so protective of the vicarious pleasure one felt from the other's freedom.

"You can too, right?"

"Pardon?"

"Your parents aren't around to dictate to you, are they? So you can do whatever your heart pleases, can't you?"

His heart pounded a little at that.  _ Whatever your heart pleases _ . Would that come with one Hermione Granger served on a silver platter? "I'm afraid my desires are still far from achievable," he said, keeping his eyes down. "Pureblood tradition means a life of suppressing your true thoughts unless you're completely mashed."

"You should keep going too, Draco. I mean." The words seemed to pour out of her in a sudden flow of air. "I know what it's like to want to escape your life and—and expectations people have of you. My—well, my hobby has been a great source of relief to me—an outlet, I suppose you could say. I don't want to deny you your right to something that would help with your personal demons."

He somehow understood, right then, exactly what she meant. The anonymity, the utter freedom to let it all go to bloody fuck, the ability to forget everything that existed outside the mats—everything, including the way the world he had grown up with had left him high and dry. "You're giving me permission to go to the fights now?"

"I didn't like that you were there, to be honest. It was like my own little sanctuary, my own private spot of madness. But I can't begrudge your need of it when it’s kept me sane at times."

It was so strange that they were discussing this out in the open, as though ruminating over a game of Quidditch. They were speaking about sex fighting as though it were therapy. A thought suddenly struck him that that was exactly how Hermione Granger had chosen to deal with her problems. It  _ was _ therapy for her, in a way that bashing his head against the wall of her self-possession had turned into an outlet for him.

She rushed on. “I just...given what happened with my own parents, I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry about what I said about your parents. Whatever else they did and were, they were still your parents and… It's not easy, growing up to realise that you're so different from them and all that they expected of you. I… Well, let's just say, I understand what that's about."

Draco considered that something had possibly happened that day he ran into Hermione Granger at the restaurant. A bad week, she said, which coincided with her disappearance from the arena the week before. She was making multiple attempts at reconciliation now. "What happened to your parents?"

She didn't respond immediately, but somehow he knew she was going to. She was in a brittle state of mind today, disappointed with the failure of her long-standing proposal and probably hurting for little Edward. Eleven. That was when he himself went to Hogwarts for the first time and realised just how big the world was. If Edward failed to be personally approved by the Board before the start of term, he would be relegated to homeschooling.

It made something inside him cringe a little. Shame at the state of the world and how little it offered for those on the fringes of society, something that he knew a little about these days. It was where Draco himself now belonged, when once he sat on top of the world inside the Minister's box.

"They’re gone. I sent them off to save them. Didn’t realise that the makeshift memories I created for them would send them off to go mountain climbing. It was a freak accident. Their entire group got lost in a snowstorm." She laughed at that, although it wasn't funny at all, her sad tale. It was an ironic tale, the kind that if you didn't laugh at it, you'd end up crying for days.

"I’m sorry about that." What would once have been a rote line felt surprisingly truthful.

"It’s...I don’t know. I don’t really want to talk about this, Malfoy." Her eyes looked suddenly very red and she turned away from him as she spoke.

_ That makes the both of us, Granger _ , he thought with not a little wryness. If they started down this road of deaths and murder, they would be standing there a very long time. He sought to lighten the tension. "You and I, we’re both orphans now." Possibly his technique needed more work.

"Yeah. And Harry. And Neville, in a way. And Susan Bones."

He added to the list. "Theo. Millie. The whole bloody lot of us."

Her laughter was a little more genuine this time, a laugh at the fates and the world at large rather than at him. "What a thing to have in common."

“I suppose there’s worse.”

Hermione sobered and her mouth opened to say something, but she was cut off by the bell ringing inside the cavern. They both looked up towards the sound; Draco feeling more than a bit disoriented and strangely disappointed. This conversation had been both a little like being hexed or flying long-distance for the first time. Simultaneously disturbingly painful and uncomfortable, but also with that weightless feeling in your stomach afterwards that marked the beginning of something exhilarating in its newness. 

She turned back to him. “Well,” she said. She pulled at the ends of her hair in a strangely self-conscious manner before jerking her hand down. “I’ll see you around, Malfoy?”

He nodded, watching for a moment as she hurried out of the lip of the cavern without looking back. He turned and made his way back to the meeting room, not noticing the sharp look Nott sent his way.

It only occurred to him when he was once again seated in his lofty perch that she had called him by his first name when she first saw him.

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get heated in the ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry that this chapter didn't make the usual updating time. Disenchantedglow, kahcicamera, and lunamionny all spent so much time helping me work through a potentially troubling scene (can you spot it?). It's really thanks to their double duties as beta/alpha that this chapter is fit to be seen.

Draco tried to keep away from the arena.

There was a part of him that was afraid to go back, despite what Hermione Granger had said the last time they met. He wanted to; the yearning to see her in her element was like an addiction calling him, pulling him forward. He had never been very good at resisting temptation, and this new siren call had taken over his mind, stopped only by the disdain he was afraid he'd see on her face.

When he did turn up, Hermione didn't seem as surprised or irritated to see him, even though she asked with raised eyebrows, "Us again?"

"Should be simple enough for you to pin me and have your evil way with me."

There was a little furrow between her brows as they stood on the side of the ring, waiting for their turn on the mat. "I've thought about what you said the last times we've met," she said suddenly, not looking at him. "And I shouldn’t have made assumptions about you."

His response was a short laugh as he watched the first duo—Gibs and a girl he hadn't seen before—wrestle each other to the floor. He didn’t uncross his arms or turn to face her fully.

Her apology was ironic, as was the way she studiously avoided looking at him. He assumed the grand gesture was born out of her determination to do what was ethically correct, which also accounted for her distaste for associating with him. The taint of evil was all over him, after all; worse than on those who were actually punished by a prison sentence. He was a hypocrite who was rewarded with a slap on the wrist. 

"Everyone does. Why should you be the exception?"

That made her wince. "Well, I don't want to be a sheep."

"What do sheep have to do with anything?"

"You know...they coo and bah and follow wherever they're led."

His amusement was genuine this time and he turned to raise an eyebrow at her. "Hardly. Have you ever tried to get a sheep to follow you? I daresay you haven't."

From her profile, he could see that she rolled her eyes and chortled under her breath. "Fine! It was just a figure of speech."

The words blurted out of him before he could bite them back. "You're gorgeous when you laugh."

She faced him with an amused and skeptical glint in her eyes. "You can't even see half my face."

"I'm reasonably assured I can recognise you even with that measly excuse for a mask."

"Are you—complimenting me? Are you thinking to weaken my defenses through words somehow?"

"Is it working?" He was only partially joking.

"Not even a little bit." Her lips were twitching and he was filled with an almost unreal sense of euphoria.

Strange as their conversational topic had been prior to this brazen excuse for a sport, it highlighted the difference from their previous animosity in the arena. 

Their names were called, and they proceeded onto the mat. This time, instead of standing in place, he retreated. When he backed away from her three times around the ring, she stopped and raised her hands like she had no idea what he was doing.

"Are you going to retreat the entire time?" she asked, sounding faintly incredulous and not a little amused.

"It worked for Russia, didn't it?" he replied.

"You've read Muggle history?"

Her surprise would have been the perfect chance to lunge towards her and body-slam her but he found he was reluctant to do so. "I had a lot of time after Hogwarts." Now he was the one amused by the way she blinked at him. "Don't tell me it's making you fall for me."

That wrung a laugh out of her. "Dream on."

_ Every night, darling. Every night. _

"Anyway," she said in a conversational way, as though they weren't facing off in a roped arena. She stepped between his feet and hooked him behind his calf. This time, he was ready and threw her down on the mat. Under the mask, she looked surprised and...pleased?

It lasted all of two seconds because when he pinned her down using his splayed body, he happened to glance backwards at her face. Her mouth was screwed up as though she smelled something bad and he immediately felt self-conscious.

"Have you been drinking again?" she asked.

"Ah... yes." He’d had a few drinks earlier. She evidently had the noise of a niffler.

Her question distracted him long enough that she managed to wriggle out of his grip to hold both his shoulders onto the mat for the requisite time. 

"POINT TO MEDUSA!"

Draco was distracted when they regained their footing and faced off once more across the ring. Did his breath smell? Did he reek? He had never wondered too too much about any of that that before, having better than average hygienic habits habits and very costly perfumes at his disposal. Now, he couldn't help but think about it. It made him unable to face her properly, and so she had full advantage over over him.

"We've done this three times now, Mal—Dracula," she said, standing straight up with her hands on her hips instead of circling him in a crouched position. "Haven't you learned a thing yet?"

At that moment, Draco couldn’t help but think that, even stripped down to her undergarments, she was still a bloody swot. She was actually critiquing his gameplay. The thing was, rules for quarterstaff sparring were so different from wrestling, even unofficial wrestling. He froze in place. It struck him then that this was yet another of her tactics, to throw him off by casting shade on everything he did today. 

"You know what you're doing wrong?" she asked as she advanced on him.

He was too distracted by how high her shorts rode on her arse, molding tightly to the lips of her plump core. His throat grew dry just thinking about it. It had been a while since he had last seen her like this.

"You're standing too high," she said, and made a lunge towards him. He made a weak attempt to grab her.

She ducked under his arms and grabbed him around the torso. Good lord, that really felt so good. It had been so long since he had felt this. 

Her forward, outstretched arm that he had tried to grab ahold of was suddenly withdrawn behind her back. With more fancy footwork, she emerged behind him, her other arm still locked about his middle. In another moment, he was down on the mat and she had a leg across the top of his shoulders and his right arm pulled around his back. 

A breath swept across the back of his neck like a caress. "Seriously, how were you even the Seeker in school with reflexes like this?"

That did it. With his left arm, he managed to sweep her top leg from under her. She almost did the splits, except he caught her with a hooked arm under her thigh and dropped her down. He whipped his right arm up and pressed it up under her chin, holding her wrist tightly over her shoulder. 

"POINT TO DRACULA!"

Instead of looking angry, her eyes glittered approvingly up at him. "Very good."

The one or two times he had actually managed to get the drop on her had always been brief. There was a part of him that disliked holding her down like this, with her struggling. It reminded him of other images in his head, of things he had witnessed during the war, of actions he had vowed never to take. 

Only she looked so satisfied with him like this. 

It was such an intimate position. Next to them, on the mirrored wall, he caught a glimpse of their position: him wearing nothing but black briefs and a black mask over the top half of his face, her wearing a white halter bra-top and matching high-waisted shorts cut high up on her leg, making her seem like a long-legged goddess. 

Her knee was hooked over his arm and pressed up against her chest for a brief moment of spine-tingling proximity. She wriggled her bottom leg up from where he was lying on top of it, with his cock pressed against her thigh. 

With his one knee on the ground, the other angled up and her raised hips grasped in one hand, he could be buried inside her in another second. He was tingling where her leg roughly brushed against him.

Maybe she hadn't even noticed the heaviness in his shorts. 

"I see insults are the only thing that are going to help up your game," she was saying.

She spoke as though he were her student and she had just taught him something relevant and useful, instead of him having improved slightly in the last two weeks of private training. She wore such a—proud expression, too. Without thinking, he dipped his head down to kiss her.

She jerked her face away at the last moment, her head banging backwards on the mat, and his lips brushed against her nose and her cheek.

In another clambering motion, she had used her feet to climb up his chest, done a backwards roll, and maneuvered out of his grip. The woman was a bloody contortionist.

"What was that?" she asked in strident tones, using the back of one hand to wipe her face.

"Don't insult me then," he said, for lack of anything better to say.

The first set ended in a draw, the first time he had ever managed one against her. 

He retreated to the refreshment table and poured himself something to drink. Thanks to her comment, he opted for water instead of the superior refreshments he had brought with him, specifically Lightning Brew.

"How are you always paired with Medusa?" came the inevitable question, this time from Gibs. 

Before Draco could even decide not to deign to respond, Gibs continued. "Don't get me wrong. Nobody except Leo cares very much. Everyone's here for a good time and the other women are better sports about giving it up, yeah? But Leo's got a thing for her. Really wants to go up against her. He's sore with you for monopolising her."

Draco wanted to tell the absent Leo to fuck off.

Instead, he smiled mysteriously and said, "She's the best at this game, isn't she? I only wrestle with the best."

Gibs stared at him with raised eyebrows and whistled. "I reckon you're the only man around here with that mindset. Carry on, then."

The anger was a little slow to build, but come it did as Draco stood there with his blasted water. 

Leo, was it? That bloody little fucker. Which one was he again? The one who resembled a bulldog? Draco couldn't remember. There were so many members in this club and now it seemed as though they had all had a go at eating Hermione out.

Just not him.

The blood was rushing to his head.

It wasn't personal, Draco thought to himself. It wasn't as though he wanted exclusive access to her or anything. He just wanted _ some _ access. Yes, he hated sharing, but she wasn't a _ thing _; she was a person and nobody could determine who another person planned on having sexual relations with…

Logically, he knew all this.

It just wasn't making a difference to his pounding pulse.

"Why are you holding your arms so far from your body?" Medusa was asking him.

Round two.

In his growing anger, he almost failed to strip down. There she was again: nude, just like how he liked her. Small and taut and curved. God, he really wanted to lick every single inch of her. 

Except he couldn't. She never let him.

The thought infuriated him so much that he rushed at her in an uncharacteristic show of aggression. 

She had fast reflexes, he'd give her that. She ducked as he made a wide grab for her with both arms. With one hand, she hooked the outside of his knee and brought him down on the other leg. He had seen this move before and it was only due to her spryness that she managed to spin away and only very narrowly missed being crushed under him when he fell to the mat.

Pulling his arm completely behind him so that it was angled painfully halfway up his back, she lay flush and pressed up against his spine. He could feel the heat of her body where she was in contact with him.

"You always do worse in the second round. Have you noticed that?" she said. She sounded a little out of breath, and he twisted his head around to look at her. Her hair brushed across his shoulder and he shivered at the tickling sensation. She partially lifted off him onto one knee on the mat, with the other leg looped over his hip. "Come on. You can do better than this. Or are you too distracted by my breasts?"

His eyes flicked down to the sweat glistening on her chest, lovely tanned skin, such a contrast from how pale he was. He really had a thing for her breasts, barely a handful with pointy nipples that looked perpetually hard. He could suck on those for an entire day.

Maybe she had a point. 

Maybe by the second round, he was always too aroused to do much more than whimper as she danced circles around him.

"POINT TO MEDUSA!"

She leaned in. "I always thought you were more into arse play," she whispered before letting him up.

Her tone was playful. She was teasing him, treating him like a plaything instead of someone to be taken seriously.

They faced off again, standing in their ready, crouched positions.

"If you pin me just once in the second round," she said, feinting towards him and smirking at him when he flinched, "I won't peg you again."

"What will you give me then? A blow job?" His response was deliberately sarcastic. Of course she wasn't going to suck him off. Not even when he was so hard he was leaking from his tip. His hand moved down to automatically adjust his cock, pulling the foreskin over the tip. He thought to relieve the ache in his groin but only made it worse. It felt as though it could put someone's eye out.

"Maybe I'll let you Parseltongue me," she said, in the same half-joking, half-mocking way.

Fuck. 

He couldn't be so lucky, could he?

She was still laughing when he lunged towards her, keeping his arms close to his body and ducking his chin in the way he had seen her do multiple times. His right hand grasped her upper thigh right up against her core, fingers digging slightly into the firm muscle there. His other arm was tight around the back of her waist, grappling for her left elbow. Her mouth was slightly agape as she tried to step aside, but he had lifted her clear off the mat—

And brought her down hard on the ground. 

So hard that she grunted.

"Fuck." He had only just been able to brace himself with one hand beside her ear. "Are you alright?" One of his arms had trapped hers behind her back, so he ran his other hand briefly down her other side in an instinctual check for injury.

"POINT TO DRACULA!"

She bared her teeth at him. "I'm not a weakling, so don't treat me like one."

"Who—"

Draco never managed to finish his thought, even in his own head, because a surge of magic rushed out from her and blew him backwards in a torrent of air. He was thrown backwards, his hand disengaging from her arm, to land on his back a few feet away.

"MAGICAL DEFENSE! DRACULA IN THE LEAD!"

There was a roar of cheering and shouts from the crowd. All Draco could register was that Medusa had stood up, all five feet three inches of her, and was advancing on him with dangerous eyes.

He found that he was genuinely scared of her. 

Draco scrambled to rise to a standing position. His cock, however, didn't know when to be scared. It pointed directly towards Medusa.

"TWO MINUTES REMAINING!"

"That was good, Dracula," Medusa said, almost purring as she circled him.

His cock apparently liked a vengeful Medusa. At the sound of her low voice, it twitched as though being beckoned. 

"But you don't really think you can beat me, do you?"

She ducked under his guard, grabbed him around the thigh with an underhand through his legs. With her other arm, she pushed against his sternum and spun on her heel, somehow ending with her back to him. His leg flew up and he toppled to the ground.

Medusa lay perpendicularly on top of him, his right arm stretched across his body so he couldn't leverage himself up. The entire side of her body lay across his jugular, and his other arm was pinned uselessly beneath him while she faced his feet.

She held his right hand and scissored it between her thighs. His ring and little fingers brushed against her plump mound and he instinctively curled them towards her until he felt the prickle of the hair growing out on her cunt against his fingertips. He couldn't breathe.

Whether it was because he literally couldn't breathe, it was hard to tell. In another moment, he felt a light touch on his penis. 

She was stroking it with one light finger.

"I must say, despite all your faults, you really do have an extremely nice penis." Her hand curled around it and she rubbed the tip with her thumb. 

Draco almost saw stars.

"Thick."

Rub.

"Long."

Squeeze.

"And really very pretty, even the colour."

"You can—take it—home—with you," he choked out. It took all of his breath to say those few words.

"I don't fancy a bloody penis on my wall," she said, and it only hit him much later, the macabre humour in her words. 

He was concentrating on not falling apart at her hands, coming all over her fingers, her body, her breasts in a gooey mess of white come.

He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He was helped by the fact that his pulse was pounding on the right side of his neck.

"Give up, Dracula. You're changing colour."

He choked something out that she couldn't hear, so she inclined her head closer. All the while, her hand stroked his cock.

_ Faster, dammit. Faster. _

No. No, she wasn't wringing a forced orgasm from him again.

He gritted his teeth and pounded the mat with his heel. Once. Twice.

"POINT TO MEDUSA! TIME!"

Medusa lazily rolled off him and pulled herself into a standing position. He didn't move; just lay there taking in gulps of air. He didn't have to look down to know that his cock was still stabbing the air.

She tsked and came closer, dropping elegantly onto her knees. Her hair had come undone and she tucked a strand of flyaway curl behind her ear. "Poor Dracula," she said. "But it seems that I did promise…"

Draco could hardly believe it when she held her hair back with one hand, spread her legs and knelt directly over his face. 

He could see everything. Her pretty pink pussy lips, sprinkled with short hairs growing back in from her last shave. Her glistening core, wet and gleaming for him. Without thinking, he opened his mouth as she settled on his face.

He could smell and taste everything. Sweat and skin and just the faintest hint of soap from her last shower. He rubbed his nose in deeper, imagining that it was his cock, burrowing, burrowing for the right spot. 

Above him, she hissed as his nose nudged up against her clit. Her hips undulated under his two hands, her thighs falling even further apart. He lapped eagerly, greedily at her juices; quickly, because she could change her mind at any moment and clamber off him. Repeatedly, to store the taste and the smell and the memory of this for later. His own erection lay untended in his lap, but this was even better. He could spend hours, days, weeks here. This was where he fucking belonged. If he could, he’d shrink himself down to fit inside her cunt and go wherever she went.

Lightly, he pulled her tender nub between his lips and suckled at it. Glancing up, he saw that her head was thrown back, her hair was wild, and she was massaging her own breast. His hand left her buttock and pulled at her hand, intertwining their fingers. She fell forward, bracing herself on the floor above his head with both hands. He could finally touch her nipples, those ripe raspberries that were hard little nubbins that made her gasp and jerk as he pinched them.

With one hand, he rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, his other hand clasped under the thigh draped around his cheek. She rode his face hard now, her thighs almost spread-eagle on either side of his head. A keening sound met his ears and she was coming, flooding his face with her juices. He drank deeply, lifting his head up to bury his nose and mouth even harder into her. He flicked his tongue deep into her passage, wanting—oh, wanting all of this and even more. 

Her thighs shook and he grabbed both of them with hard hands to lock her in place as he went in for the kill. 

With a loud groan, she fell over, holding onto the top of his head, lying sideways on the floor with her thighs still around his head. Panting for air.

Draco moved.

In a flash, he had their positions reversed: she was flat on her back with her legs pulled up around his hips. A glance downwards showed that the plump lips of her cunt were leaking juices from her orgasm and she felt limbless and pliable from her high. Her core was opening like a flower just for him. He positioned his cock at her entrance and _ God _, that felt unbelievable. Made for him. Her belly felt soft and firm and slim under his hands and—

"Hey!" she said. Her eyes had been heavy-lidded with lust and pleasure not a minute ago, but now they were wide-awake and suspicious.

Poised at her entrance, he paused. "What?" His tone was faintly incredulous and he almost didn’t hear her over the pounding in his ears.

He was firmly entrenched between her legs, with his shoulders right above hers, his hands braced on the ground on either side of her temples. His cock was pulsing against her cunt, begging for entry. Just a little more and he could be so deeply seated within her. Just groan for him to start pounding her. It took more than a little effort to freeze in place.

She must have felt him twitching at her entrance because she pushed at his shoulder, though surely she was capable of much more effort if she really wanted him gone. "Don't you fucking dare."

He heard only the taunt in her voice. Did he dare?

A part of him did fucking dare. She was _ challenging _ him, just as she had all the times they had ever gone up against one another, _ daring _ him to do something she thought he didn’t have the nerve to do.

Around them, there was a low burble of conversation. From what he knew now, there were times when people wandered off after the end of a match. Probably none but a few people were still watching, and they probably thought she was putting on a token show. Nobody intervened.

"Get the fuck off me, Malfoy," she said. She stared up at him, her chin jutting out and her eyes flashing from behind the mask.

The hardness in her voice finally clicked through his frozen awareness. Despite all his professed good intentions, even to himself, he realised that his hands were still gripping her tightly in place.

He sat up, and she backed away from him, breathing hard and watching him narrowly.

"I didn't—" he began and stopped. He sank back on his haunches. His chest rose and fell, his entire body still crying out for her touch despite his confusion. What had just happened here?

A series of images and thoughts whirled through his mind. He had always wondered exactly what made a man rape or kill. Back in the days leading up to the final battle at Hogwarts, he had seen multiple instances of it and had always resolutely turned his head away to the side. That wasn’t him, he had always thought. He wasn’t like that. Such actions had forcibly borne into him an awareness of the pettiness of his childhood behaviour, of temper tantrums when things didn’t go his way, or using less than upstanding methods to get his due.

_ This is our right _ , Mulciber had gloated to him. _ Don’t you want to sample a taste? You and your prissy blond ways…Don’t tell me you think your father was above this… _

All lies, Draco had always maintained to himself. His father didn’t like sullying his hands. There was that rough edge of violence that would occasionally mar the smoothness of Lucius’s brow or the odd thought of irritation that would twist his lips into a sneer...but no, Mulciber was lying to him. He must have been.

It was only now that Draco realised how easily the lines between consent and self-justification blurred—how easily it would be for someone to _ take _and later convince themselves that they had a superior right to something. How easy it would be to blind yourself to reality and tell yourself you had seen something else or mistaken it for acquiescence where none existed.

Medusa’s chest was heaving in exertion as she sat a few feet away from him, her hands clasped to her chest in that instinctive, defensive pose. It was only now that he saw her with clearer eyes; at her body language that was clearly shouting out a rejection. There was a look at wariness on her face as she regarded him.

Not the expression of unfulfilled lust at all.

How had he missed it? Had that been how she felt the entire time? It felt like a slap in the face.

Had he been about to cross the line that he thought he’d never breach?

He slowly let out a breath of air and gazed down at the mat. His libido felt as though it would never survive this. He found it hard to even raise up his eyes to look at her face.

"NEXT ROUND IN TEN MINUTES!"

Draco slowly rose to his feet, feeling as though he had gone ten rounds with an offended hippogriff. He ran his thumb and his fingers down around the outside of his mouth before palming his jawline, hard.

Without looking back at her, he ducked between the arena ropes and made his way to the corner where he had stowed his clothes. He stood with one hand braced up against the wall for a moment, trying to regain his equilibrium.

"So, you finally ate Medusa out." 

Gibs, the cockney Harry Potter doppelganger, stood watching him with his arms crossed over his chest. There was a huge smirk on his face. Like he knew things Draco didn't. "Welcome to the club. You had a clear opening back there. Why didn’t you just go for it?"

Draco's teeth ground together. Without thinking, he whirled around and punched Gibs square in the face.

At first, there was just the sound of flesh striking flesh. A gasp. Shocked whispers as Gibs staggered backwards, bumping up against the shelving. Then more murmurs as people turned their attention towards the two of them. A few of the audience rose on tiptoes around the room to see what the commotion was.

From across the room, with a deep frown etched between her brows, Gwyneth elbowed her way through the crowd.

“What’s happening?” Gwyneth asked, eyebrows drawn as she glared at Draco and Gibs in turn.

Gibs made a downwards motion with his palms, meant to be pacifying. Casting a sideways glance at Draco before he surreptitiously fingered the corner of his mouth, Gibs shrugged. “Just some fun with me mate,” he said. “Ain’t that right, Drax.”

Gwyneth turned her frosty gaze on Draco. 

Draco's fists were clenched at his sides and his breaths were heavier than before, but he had control of himself now. Slowly, he unfurled his fingers. 

When Gibs slung an overly familiar arm around Draco's shoulders, Draco gritted his teeth and forced out a civil smile. It must have looked horribly unconvincing because Gwyneth looked even more suspicious. 

“He’s right. We were just…” Draco cast about for the right words. “Joking around.”

The crowd began to disperse as the next pairing prepared for their match.

“Alright,” Gwyneth said slowly. “But watch yourselves. This isn’t a zoo.”

Both Draco and Gibbs nodded politely with their arms around each other, in the way schoolboys did when they were in danger of being put in detention for brawling. 

Draco shook himself free as soon as Gwyneth turned her back on them.

“You fancy her, don’t you? Medusa, I mean,” Gibs said, watching Draco closely. “I don’t know what to tell you, except it’s not a great idea.”

Draco didn’t respond. As if Gibs was saying anything he didn’t already know.

There was no sign of a smile on Gibs’s face now, not even a social one. He leaned one shoulder against the shelves as though he planned on talking to Draco all night. “All this here—it’s fake. We’re all in disguise. And like people have said before, she's not sporting in the least. Don’t put your heart into it, know what I mean?"

Draco tried to tune him out, except the words continued to reverberate in his head even after he left.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco has hardly any encounters with Hermione.

Draco didn’t know what to think anymore.

_ It’s all fake. _

_ We’re all in disguise. _

_ Don’t put your heart into it. _

_ She’s not sporting. _

It wasn’t as though it was anything he hadn’t known before. Maybe he just really needed a shag. Obviously, what would be best would be if he bedded Hermione Granger and got her out of his system. That was proving to be impossible, though. 

Their last interaction had cemented this thought even more. Her look of rejection, of fear, couldn't be further from his mind. He had almost raped her. Good god, what kind of monster was he really?

Draco had always maintained, in the aftermath of the war, that his actions and thoughts had been commandeered and manipulated. It was an easy tale to sell, and he had come to believe those excuses that had been published on his behalf. Was it possible that he was exactly the monster he had sought to distance himself from?

Then there was the memory of what had happened just before.

_ She had been begging for him, hands clutched in his hair and scraping against his bare shoulder, thighs that shook so uncontrollably it seemed she were on the verge of complete collapse. _

Not a full minute after that had she completely rejected him and stared at him like he was a monster. 

She probably had an entire memorised list of reasons to reject him. He was a heinous bully, according to her previous impassioned speech. He was a useless waste of space. 

None of this was new, and yet it had started to grate on him more and more. He didn’t even understand why he had become so fixated on her, unless it was that damnable obsessive personality that Blaise always badgered him about.

They were _ not friends _, with the unspoken declaration that he wasn’t worthy enough to be categorised as such. Even if her current friends were excluded from certain aspects of her life. Even if he was starting to feel as though she was the only person who could understand the disparity of living in this odd post-war society, when one had been through endless violence and strife and had to to simply move on with the peace of the mundane as though nothing had happened. 

Everyone indeed appeared to have moved on swimmingly except for him and, startlingly enough, Hermione Granger, who kept a part of her life a secret from everyone except him. _ That _ part of her fought like a dervish and had plaited hair like snakes and wore her lips redder than depravity—a persona only he had seen and known and identified as Hermione Granger. 

That in itself was more intimate than sex or marriage. It galled him that he was the only one in their strange partnership to feel this way.

He didn’t need her good opinion to live his best life, but he was certainly starting to crave it.

  
  


* * *

Blaise returned with a girlfriend in tow. 

Draco couldn’t find it in him to care all that much. All his time was spent fighting with his trainer, training with the quarterstaff until he couldn’t catch his breath and the sweat sluiced off his half-naked body like rain. He had progressed from the classic British strike moves and was now being primed on the infinite number of variations from the Orient. The upside to all this was that he wasn’t tossing and turning for hours before bedtime due to pent-up, unused energy. 

It was inevitable that his substitute exercise regimen for sex would be found out eventually.

“What—oh. Wait. _ What? _” was Blaise’s reaction to finding him in the Long Gallery of the Manor.

Draco nodded at his trainer, who retreated from the room, before toweling off. He summoned a bottle of water into his hand and drank deeply as he walked over to where Blaise stood by the side of the gallery.

Blaise gave Draco a careful once-over, a smile lurking on his lips. “Well. This is a new look for you.”

Draco shrugged off the one-sided spaulder he wore over his non-dominant shoulder and peeled off his forearm guards. Using his wand, he Scourgified his bare upper body before he pulled on a loose shirt. 

“You’ve been working out,” Blaise said, his tone indicating he was much titillated by the changes before his eyes. “You look exceptionally fit. Is that weird for me to say to you?”

“A bit, yes,” Draco replied. “How is Izma?”

Blaise waved his hand in a careless motion. “Oh, you know my mother. Always up to some intrigue or another. More to the point, I see you’ve picked up a new—or old—hobby.”

Draco refilled his bottle and drank from it again.

“Is that Firewhiskey? Aren’t you going to offer me any?” Blaise asked.

Draco wordlessly handed his bottle to Blaise, who sniffed suspiciously at it and sipped gingerly before raising his eyebrows in surprise and handing it back to Draco. “It’s water.”

“I’ve been known to drink it from time to time.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as though he had never gotten into a loud debate with his trainer about his dietary habits. Apparently, Hermione Granger wasn’t the only one who had a nose like a niffler and extremely perceptive ways.

“Well, well,” Blaise said, holding his hands behind his back and walking in a circle around Draco. “You _ have _ been busy while I’ve been gone. I came to personally invite you over for a private luncheon to meet Ester.”

“Your new flame?”

“We’re living together now,” Blaise said as carelessly as if he had just said he enjoyed milk in his tea. “You’ll see why when you see her. I think she’s the love of my life.”

“I give it two months,” Draco said, finishing off his water and returning the bottle to the table with his wand. “Fancy a round of staffing?”

Blaise raised his eyebrows. “You dismiss my love life so cavalierly and expect me to staff with you? You’ll see, Malfoy. When you fall in love, you’ll understand how it feels. Anyway, I won’t be going to the arena for the time being—”

“For the time being? You mean, permanently.”

“We’ll see. I may have to break her into the idea gently,” Blaise said.

Draco stopped cold. “Never say you’ll take her there.”

Blaise shrugged. “Why not? I imagine she’d find it interesting.”

“Wouldn’t she object to seeing you with other women? Or vice versa?” Monogamy was, after all, a principle his mother had drummed into Draco’s brain time and again. Even if he didn’t think love—the selfless kind—truly existed. Everyone was out for something.

"Why would she care if my thoughts are only on her? Monogamy’s only a narrow-minded concept forced on us by society. We didn't fight in that bloody war just to have people tell us what we can and can't do!"

One could always count on Blaise to think with his hormones.

"You didn't fight at all," Draco said pointedly. 

"Tomay-toe, tomah-toe." Blaise raised his eyebrows at Draco. "More to the point, have you got anywhere with our favourite frizzy-haired gorgon yet?"

Draco didn’t flinch at the direct and very pointed change in subject, although something inside him tensed in readiness for defense. "This has nothing to do with anyone. I just fancied getting back into shape, that's all."

Blaise clicked his tongue in a mock sympathetic way. "That means still no luck with Granger. Oh, pardon, I meant Medusa, of course." His tone was almost singsong.

"Hermione Granger has nothing to do with the arena." Draco schooled his features into an expression of pure and utter boredom. 

"Strange you're so insistent on that when I distinctly remember a time when you didn't give her the benefit of the doubt."

"I'm just not interested in people from the past."

"Hmm." Blaise looked and sounded sceptical before shrugging it off, clearly not intending to waste too many brain cells on the matter. "Well, I just came around to check you didn't gamble your way out of house and home, especially when you weren't at your flat. You're returning to the Manor permanently, are you?"

"No." Draco's reaction was immediate and short. He internally winced at how abrupt and defensive he sounded and modified his tone. "No, I just...I needed a place to practice, that's all. The studio was too small."

Blaise looked up and around the room around them. "Well. This has nothing on Italy or Turkey for that matter, but I'm reliably informed it's one of the premier homes in England."

Draco followed Blaise's gaze. The Long Gallery was a later addition to the very end of the west wing. It had been many things in the past: a storage area for leftover art, a dueling room, a solarium. Most recently, it had been a holding cage for a Zhuque, an Opalesque Bird from Asia. 

He didn't know how or where Voldemort had gotten one, but one day he’d found out that a mythical animal had been locked into his mother’s solarium. Presumably, it’d been so that Nagini could not get in and make a short meal of it. 

When he was walking outside one day, he happened to see the Zhuque fly through the room like an iridescent comet and he realised that he was wrong. The Zhuque would have annihilated Nagini. Although commonly associated with the phoenix for immortality, the Zhuque was far larger in size, with mastery over fire and ice and the ability to lay waste to the world if it wished.

Unluckily for Voldemort, it had never wished to do so for him. 

It had also, surprisingly, left all his mother's plants unharmed and completely untouched.

The very last time Draco stood here with his parents had been immediately after the war and before his father was formally charged. When he had looked for the bird, it was gone. 

Disappeared into the daylight without a trace, like the famed immortal that it was reputed to be. 

Despite the tiny flicker of wistfulness within him, Draco had been glad that it hadn't been exploited, unlike every other thing in his life.

"Anyway, I'll let you get back to your jousting. It's too bad you can't show up to the arena like this. I'm fairly confident in saying that most women would love this entire look you have going for you." Blaise accompanied his words with a meaningful gesture at Draco's attire, which consisted of white loose-fitting trews and an equally loose shirt, cut open at the chest in a deep V. "Trust me. I know what I'm talking about."

Although part of Draco knew Blaise was simply a perpetually positive friend, he stiffened at Blaise's words. They served as a sudden, unwelcome reminder that Blaise, too, had been with Medusa in just the same way Draco had. Only perhaps Blaise had been more welcome. 

No.

No, he wasn't going down that path. It was all behind him. Draco was determined not to return to the arena. He would eventually owl Gwyneth that the property would only be available for activities until the end of this year. 

By the time he sent Blaise off, Draco had recovered his equanimity or enough of it that he put on a good show for his friend. Christ, what kind of a bloody unstable person had he been before for Blaise to not have found his current dark demeanour strange or off-putting? Draco was reluctant to examine his recent past.

* * *

What was it about this postwar society that revelled in this constant slew of plebeian celebrations?

The current party was the Blessing Ceremony at the Eyam-de-la-Zouch (pronounced “Im de la Zoo”), which used to be a fairly exclusive event and closed off to the general wizarding public. 

Draco’s life was a kaleidoscope of such affairs. He recalled parties that had excluded him when he was very young and had been sent to bed extra early, having dined alone with the house-elves. That was followed by a boisterous game of chase (that he initiated) in his rooms for an hour before he fell asleep next to the door, hoping that his parents would come to keep him company. 

There were the parties when he would be called downstairs to recite from memory passages from ancient texts or to show off any magic he could command. Those days had been full of a certain kind of performance anxiety, because he knew he would be judged on his command of pre-adolescent magic. If labeled as accomplished, he would be praised for days afterwards. If not, then comparison with so-and-so’s child would be brought up in the weeks that followed, accompanied with an increase in assignments. Tutors might be dismissed on account of Draco’s poor performance.

On the heels of those days were the dancing parties that commenced once he came of age at twelve. Soon, girls were someone to hold carefully about the waist as you twirled around a drawing room under the matronly smiles and approving nods of observing parents. Although rigidly chaperoned, there was still something slightly risque about those events. Furtive whispers would pass between the girls as they slid sidelong glances towards the boys that lined the opposite wall. Inevitably, there would always be one girl who was brave enough to cross the divide; the girl the boys whispered about amongst themselves as the one who would be the first to show them a bit of bosom. 

As it turned out, they hadn’t been wrong. It had been Pansy who had come up to Draco, leaning against the wall and trying to act nonchalant as she did so. Inside, he preened at the disappointed expressions on the faces of his friends who weren’t chosen. 

_ I’ll show you mine if you show me yours _, she had said when they wandered out onto the balcony with the permission of both mothers. Neither of them, Draco was certain, knew how bold Pansy could be.

_ What? _ he had responded initially in confusion, his mind on the Quidditch bet he had with Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe had always had an uncanny instinct for the winning team, and Draco thought he just might lose again.

Later, he had regaled Crabbe and Goyle of how Pansy had grabbed his hand and let him feel her up. Her breasts were an interesting contrast of firmness and softness, and he recalled squeezing them as he would a particularly squishy toy until Pansy had squealed with alarm. 

_ Not like that _ , she told him. _ Can you be gentler? _

There had been no deeper emotion in it for him, just a kind of lukewarm interest that turned into avid focus when she turned her attention to his pleasure. He had treated her badly later on, when they were sixteen, and he had let a Beauxbatons student give him a blowjob at a party during the time they were supposed to be exclusive.

_ I’m just glad I’m not in love with you _ , Pansy told him in the aftermath, arms crossed over her chest when she broke up with him. _ Furthermore, I don’t know what you’re mixed up in, but you should grow up and be your own person. I’ve had enough of doing what my parents want. Aren’t you sick of it? _

Her question had been pointed, and her eyes hinted at something other than their permitted youthful liaison. She might not have gotten grades like Hermione Granger, but she knew what was happening long before anyone else worked it out. He had distanced himself from her afterwards, wary of what she might discover about his secret agenda from the Dark Lord.

Pansy wasn’t doing what anyone expected of her. People had expected her to opt for herself and stay out of the fighting, which she did and for which she had received a lot of rubbish. 

They also expected her to crawl back to ask for forgiveness, which she hadn’t. 

Instead, she ran off to Africa to see the waterfall from whence life had supposedly sprung. Mrs. Parkinson had squawked with dismay at Pansy wasting her valuable husband-hunting years, but Pansy hadn’t given a toss. After that, she visited the floating island of Kepalauan in the Pacific southeast and never came back. She had an independent income from a spinster aunt, and she wasn’t going to marry Draco Malfoy or any other quasi-suitable rich wizard, and that was that.

Draco often thought of her—sometimes with a touch of guilt. These days, those thoughts were mostly tinged more with envy than anything else. Pansy was someone who had broken free of the expectations of their class structure, and that was admirable in itself.

Things had changed with adulthood, not least the environment around him. The Blessing Ceremony was now an open event of the season, “fun for the whole family!” Draco grimaced when he saw a plethora of red-haired children running around, and he skirted away to avoid being struck by two three-feet-high sticky missiles.

He saw Hermione Granger right away, probably because he was looking for her. Even before Blaise approached him, he saw Hermione in a jumper tucked into a flouncy skirt that ended well above her knees. _ Mismatched separates influenced by Muggle fashion _, was what Draco’s mother deemed this type of apparel. Her disapproval for this trend was always accompanied by a sniff of disdain. Narcissa Malfoy had a sniff for all different types of emotions: disapproval, approval, begrudging admiration, and even love. 

_ Pansy, dear _ , Narcissa had said on one occasion when they had all gone to see a concert in the Andes. _ Mismatched separates are all very well for Half-bloods, but they're not really the thing for our station. _Draco's mother had an entire room dedicated to her matched wardrobe. 

Pansy had flashed her sharp smile back at Narcissa and conceded the point. After they had broken up, Pansy began to wear more and more "common" clothes, "proof that she wasn't really suitable for you, darling," Narcissa had said. Both Draco and Pansy had known better, and Draco was more aware than anyone that clothes and money didn't make the woman.

Nor the man, given that he had pledged his life and death to a dark wizard in his formative years.

Certainly, clothes and money didn’t limit Hermione Granger in the least. He didn't know what Hermione had done with her hair or how one woman could look so different every single time he saw her. Today, she had left her hair loose, but instead of the wild mass of curls that could never be fully confined into plaits, her hair formed sleek waves that fell against one side of her face. She wore flat shoes and was one head shorter than everyone else around her. Not that it mattered. He picked her out at a glance.

Across the distance between them, Draco could see her roll her eyes at someone in her group who was partially obscured by a tree. 

"Ah, Draco, there you are."

Blaise strolled up to Draco across the grass, carefully escorting two women latched onto his elbows. One was clearly the girlfriend, Ester. Draco recognised her by the heavy gold cuff of sparkling jewels that Blaise had gifted her just last week. He bowed his head politely at her and she responded with a wordless smile. The other woman was someone who looked so identical to Ester that Draco blinked for a moment and automatically checked her wrist for the telltale jewelry. Her wrists bore only a thin strand of diamonds.

Both women were long-limbed brunettes with profiles like carved Grecian statues. Their smiles were identical slow, full-lipped curves and were accompanied by a graceful sweep of their lashes. Draco felt as though he were seeing double and wondered how Blaise managed to keep the two straight.

"This is Ester's sister, Ravi,” Blaise said to Draco, indicating the woman without the gold cuff. His raised eyebrows clearly attempted to remind Draco of an earlier conversation that Draco simply didn’t recall. Blaise’s next words bore a heavy overtone of sarcasm as he explained in overly patient tones. Apparently, this had all been discussed beforehand already. “She's staying with us for a while, so we’ll _ all _ be dining together later tonight. Be a good chap and show her around, won't you?" There was heavy emphasis attached to Blaise’s request.

In the space between Blaise and Ravi, Draco could see Hermione laughing at something Weasley was saying. The fading sunlight gleamed on her smooth hair and cast a bronze glow over her profile. Just what on earth had she _ done _to her hair?

Aloud, Draco said, "Of course," and extended his elbow gallantly. 

The four of them drew the eyes of the crowd as they swept through the area, looking for a place next to the riverbank. Both Draco and Blaise wore traditional wizarding robes of caped jackets with double rows of crested buttons, standard black trousers, and everyday soft-soled shoes suitable for the outdoor terrain. Next to them, Ester and Ravi were exotic beauties in daytime trews-dresses, the kind with a train around their encased but visibly delineated legs. Practical without sacrificing propriety. After school-age, of course, women's legs were properly covered up during the daylight hours. Only on the rare occasion of a cocktail party was it deemed appropriate for slightly risque apparel.

Muggle fashion, Draco's mother had sneered, was vulgar with a way of infiltrating the masses. _ Do not be like them, Draco, and please straighten your shirt collar. _

Draco slid a glance farther up the river. There was a bend where Hermione was gathered with the rest of her friends. Despite what she had complained about on the night of the Founders’ Ball, she seemed to be in perfect accord with her male friends. 

He wondered for a moment what Weasley would find to say about her legs today, since they looked like they would be completely bared up to her hip if a hardy wind blew their way. Draco had no complaints; her legs were slim and toned and golden and a glory to behold. 

_ He had felt them wrapped around his waist; smooth, warm, and taut. He had run his hand up that bare skin to squeeze her round firm buttock— _

That was before he had ruined everything, after all the ground he thought he had made.

Draco’s fist clenched at his side.

"We wait here for a naiad to appear. Then we will exchange water and earth blessings for the year," Blaise was explaining to the sisters, who were daintily perched on conjured stools. "Do you have such rituals in your homeland?"

Ester looked as though she could have been holding court on a dais instead of sitting on an uncomfortably low seat in this rustic setting. "Most of the rituals are separated between men and women," she said eventually. "I find it refreshing how open the ways are between the genders here."

The waters began to churn, faster and louder. Gradually, the talking along the waterside ceased altogether. All sound from the river stopped, and it felt as though Draco’s ears had popped. Then, along the entire riverbank, sleek heads began to emerge from the water.

Draco murmured a low greeting in Mermish, which on land could not help but sound shrill unless spoken at a whisper. Naiads had their own language, but Mermish was the acceded diplomatic language used between the water and the land folk. He tried not to look at the naiad’s eyes, which bore no eyelids but instead a light glossy film. The gills along its shoulders billowed to a stop and its nose flared open to begin to breathe the air. Draco did not allow his eyes to drift farther down to where its sex organs were hidden. Naiads were fluid beings, their gender shifting with their general population needs.

Draco’s naiad shrieked another few words, and Draco nodded once in acquiescence. 

As foreigners, the sisters did not participate in the Blessing exchange. Draco and Blaise and every adult down the entire section of the Zouch solemnly raised their wands and touched it to a naiad's fingertip, fingertips that bore no fingernail but rather was sharp and flowy like a fin. 

Draco felt a glow emitting from his wand. His naiad smiled a wide, toothless smile that appeared at once too human and also otherworldly. Its pale blue skin shimmered with various pearlescent colors before it retreated soundlessly back into the river without so much as a ripple on the water’s surface to indicate it had ever been there.

The entire section of the Zouch began to glow with a bright, golden colour and the river bank instantly sprouted out-of-season flowers.

"How lovely," Ravi said at Draco's side in a soft voice. "It would be wonderful to be able to participate in such a ceremony."

In the past, the ceremony had only been completed by a selection of Purebloods. Only recently had the Minister managed to sign off on a bill to reinstate the ritual as a family event, open to all of-age wizards and witches. Small dots on the opposite side of the river indicated where more witches and wizards stood. More than five kilometres had been provided for the ceremony when once only a few hundred metres had done the trick.

Draco had always considered this yet another chore of his upbringing. Yet another responsibility he would rather eschew but could not. 

Further up the bank, he caught a glimpse of Hermione as she beamed with delight at the multitude of water lilies and poppies that were bursting into bloom around her.

He wondered if all anything took was a different perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A softer, less smutty chapter this time, sorry. Endless thanks to my alphas, disenchantedglow and kahcicamera, and my beta/Britpicker lunamionny, for all their help and feedback.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Draco continues to obsess over his obsession with Granger.

Fireworks lit the dusky skies, and music played through the late afternoon haze. All around them, the scent of aquatic flowers unfurled. Night-blossoming buds had opened upon the blessing from the naiads. Tomorrow, during the daytime, the water would be filled with earthbound plants, and the very darkest depths of the river would abound with rare light. Gradually, this tributary would feed into all the rivers and lakes in England, to fill the land with one last ontogenetic surge in vegetation before winter's arrival.

"It's not the best vintage," Blaise said to Ester, holding up his glass and squinting at the colour. "But what can you do? It's funded by the Ministry, after all. With all the taxes they've imposed after the war, you'd think they could afford something better."

"Maybe you'd like to donate your wine cellar to the cause then, Zabini," said a voice behind them. 

Draco and Blaise stopped and turned in concert to see who had interrupted their conversation. Blaise moved so exaggeratedly slowly that it was calculated to insult. "I beg your pardon?"

"If you find fault with the Ministry's offerings, maybe you should do something about it, yeah?" Ronald Weasley was saying. His speech was the carefully enunciated diction of the pissed-drunk. His chin was lifted and his shoulders squared. 

It was slightly alarming how large Weasley had grown after graduation. He had always been taller than his brothers, with slightly hunched shoulders as though ashamed of his clothing or general appearance. After graduation, however, Draco had noticed that he began to stand up straighter. Perhaps he earned enough to afford better charmwork on readymade clothing now. Draco lifted an eyebrow in response, surveying the other man’s red face. Weasley apparently had not grown up inured to the effects of alcohol from an early age.

Blaise turned back to Draco with a muffled laugh. "Dear God. Is this what our tax money funds? Belligerent fools employed by the Ministry?" Blaise’s tone was filled with disdain and his eyes were at insolent half-mast as he surveyed their burly former classmate. "Champagne, even of this abhorrent quality, is meant to be sipped, not swilled."

"Who're you calling a-a—Who're you calling a hornet?" Weasley's volume was climbing and his hand gestures becoming wilder as he turned and laughed to an invisible audience. “What does that even  _ mean _ ?”

"Oh, no... _ Ron! _ " 

Hermione came running up, lightly and soundlessly through the grass, to latch on to Ron's arm. Her eyes flickered over each face in their group and finally up at Blaise as she gave a small apologetic smile. She had not met Draco’s eyes at all.

"I'm so sorry. He—contrary to his build, he really doesn't handle alcohol very well. He'll be very sorry in the morning." Hauling Weasley backwards in a possessive way that didn't escape Draco, Hermione said to her companion through gritted teeth, "Let's go before you really embarrass yourself, Ronald."

"Why, what's going to happen?" Weasley asked, as comically serious as though it were a real concern. His attention landed on Draco before he lurched to a halt, nose flaring faintly in hostility. "Malfoy, eh? What's he gonna do? Gonna tell your father on me?" His chin had jutted out in a truculent fashion.

Hermione's eyes widened with shock. "Ronald!" Her voice sounded like a whip around Weasley’s name.

Even before Draco could react, Blaise had stiffened and shaken off Ester's hand to step forward. "I’d suggest you shut your blithering, idiotic mouth, Weasley, before someone shuts it for you." His voice was silky with insinuation.

For a moment, Draco’s mind blanked. 

That was right. He had almost forgotten. He had missed this ceremony just last year to get blinding drunk at some gambling joint. The year before that, he had buried his father. It had completely slipped his mind.

Now, though, his brain began to flood with memories of that horrible year. First his mother, worsening in health since the end of the war. She had passed away at the end of the summer. 

Draco had gone to Azkaban to deliver the news to his father in person.

_ She's gone _ , Draco had said, unable to choke out any other words through the lump in his throat. He stared down at the table. Somehow, no tears sprang to his eyes. He was simultaneously thankful for, and betrayed by, his own body. He was sad, wasn’t he? He had loved his mother and been assured of her love in return, despite her fastidious ways.

One would never know it from his dry eyes though.

He lifted his head to look searchingly at his father.

Across the table, without looking up at him, his father, with his crookedly cut platinum hair that made his sharp cheekbones stick out even more, said,  _ I know. They told me. _

They sat in silence. 

Azkaban was staffed with human guards now, which made the atmosphere less oppressive in some ways, more humiliating in others. The Minister was trying to create a better and brighter future for England, but sometimes Draco prayed for the ways of the past to return. For the customs and rules he knew by heart and could navigate blindfolded. Not this new and changing society in which things felt unsure and filled with potential landmines.

_ There's the Blessing ceremony tomorrow _ , Draco said after clearing his throat.  _ I'm to represent the family. _

No response, but Draco hadn't expected one.  _ Should you need anything, please contact me _ , he had said then, formally, into the silence. Thinking to himself that it was only for fifteen more years. A twenty-five year sentence. It wasn't the worst in the world, but that was him being as falsely optimistic as he could be. 

When Draco rose from the table, his father moved to stop him. Physically, he attempted to touch Draco's wrist, but the spells on the room reached out and bound Lucius's wrists before any contact was made. Draco turned back to see his father grimace from the restriction. 

_ I'm proud of you, Draco _ , Draco thought Lucius said, but couldn't be completely certain. 

_ Sorry? _ Draco was startled into saying. Maybe Lucius was surprised too, because otherwise he never would have countenanced Draco apologising at the drop of a hat. Malfoys did not apologise, especially not as a contemptible verbal compulsion.

_ Remember who you are,  _ his father then said. Because he was Lucius Malfoy and Pureblood to the core, his father shook back his head and looked down his imperious nose—even though that head was now badly shorn, and his nose protruded from his gaunt, malnourished face.  _ Make good decisions, and do not disgrace the family name. _

Draco had hesitated for only the briefest of moments before nodding curtly, even offhandedly, at this rote speech. He wondered briefly if his father had heard of the birthday bash held in Aunt Bella’s townhouse; the one in which Aurors had to Apparate in to help curb the excessive fireworks display. Unofficially, there had been quite a number of illegal animals present contributing to the fire. Ironic, really, that only an hour’s difference in the times of death of Aunt Bella and Uncle Roddy meant Draco Malfoy inheriting all their combined wealth instead of a distant relative in France.

He would, of course, come back to Azkaban in a few days to visit his father. It was his duty, after all.

But that hadn't happened.

His father committed suicide during the night. 

Lucius Malfoy had grabbed ahold of the sleeve of a passing guard, aware that any human contact was illegal and banned. The invisible cords snaked out of the prison cell to wrap around his wrist and ankles.  _ Let go _ , the guard had reportedly ordered.  _ Let go! _

Lucius hadn't let go. He’d gripped the guard's arm tightly, fingers digging through the opening in the sleeve to touch human skin. The cords wrapped themselves around Lucius's waist and his arms and legs and neck, tightening as the contact continued.

_ LET GO! _ the guard had yelled and tried to reach for his wand. Wands were locked to each guard’s person in case of an errant summoning spell; each of them with their magical cores severely dampened to prevent misuse. Lucius made a grab for it. His fingers touched the grip but briefly. The cords, acting on automatic command, sent out spikes.

With a last ferocious grin that was somehow triumphant and simultaneously reconciled to his fate, Lucius made a leap—

—and wrenched his own neck with a snap.

The guard had been in tremors over the incident. Veritaserum and memory extraction revealed nothing but the truth of his testimony.

Draco hadn't attended the Blessing ceremony at all. 

He’d been called in to Azkaban to review the proceedings of the prior evening.

For a second, his eyes blurred over, and it took a supreme effort to pull himself back to the present, where Draco found himself in the strange position of standing between Blaise and Weasley. Next to him, Blaise’s hand was held wide, his glass almost completely full. Draco took the wine glass away from Blaise’s unresisting grasp and tossed the contents down his throat. 

As Blaise had observed, it was weak and of a poor vintage, but it soothed Draco’s parched throat and sent a quivering sensation all through his chest, as though deadened nerve endings had abruptly come alive again. All of a sudden, he could not imagine what had possessed him to listen to his trainer. He was better like this. Stronger. More alive than he had ever been. Sobriety was the worst thing to have happened to him.

If bad champagne could make him feel this good, why  _ wasn’t _ he using his potions regularly? His trainer had no idea what he was saying.

"Why? Lucius gonna shut it for me?" Weasley was still saying with a loose, gloating grin. "Wait, he can't! He's dead, isn't he?" He laughed at his own joke.

If Draco hadn’t been completely out of it, or if it had been earlier in the day when the light was better and Blaise wasn’t fed up with being around what he disparagingly deemed “polite society,” things wouldn’t have devolved like they did.

As it was, Draco failed to anticipate Blaise’s next move, which was to punch Ronald Weasley square in the face.

More people came running up in a clatter of footsteps, exclamations, and chatter.

“Oof!” Weasley said and then began cursing mightily, a hand clenched to the center of his face.

"What's happened?"

“Guys!”

Draco recognised Potter's voice before he even saw him. A few more people appeared. Draco registered two Auror uniforms, the dark brown protective dragonskin cuirass and laced-up boots standing out among the colourful clothing of the other attendants.

"Oh, Harry, where have you been?" Hermione was saying, sounding frazzled. Even in the heat of the moment, Draco noticed that her hair was starting to frizz. Despite the clamour distracting him, she’d never looked prettier to him.

"We saw you hitting this Auror," one of the uniforms said to Blaise, talking over Hermione’s conversation. 

The young Auror was all stiff posture and belligerent demeanor, pulling himself to his full height and his face into a scowl that was supposed to take attention from his youth. He looked barely old enough to shave, and Draco couldn’t help suppress a snicker at his showy combativeness. The Auror’s nondescript sandy brown hair bore a close-cropped hairstyle that many new Ministry recruits sported, and he had the usual mindlessly brutish look on his face that Draco often saw in those with too much nationalism or school spirit.

He recognised the look; once that had been the expression he saw when he looked on at a gathering of Death Eaters.

Hermione stepped away from Harry, shaking her head in exasperation as she flicked a frown towards Draco—the first direct look she had given him that day, fleeting as it was. "That’s not what happened, Richard. Ron was—he's really drunk and he said something very—inflammatory.”

"Didn't he have but the one glass of champagne?" someone was asking in the background in a slightly incredulous tone.

“Let’s just get him home, Harry,” a female voice shouted. Draco registered long red hair. “I can’t believe he still has no head for alcohol.”

"Can we go?" Blaise asked. His voice was flinty, and he had adopted a bored, imperious stance, with his hand seemingly protectively settled across his chest. Only Draco knew that was where he kept his wand. Slowly, Draco shifted his posture and slid his hand into his wand holster as well.

"And another thing!" Ron was still saying, this time to a tree. Someone pulled him back from taking a swing at its trunk.

"Absolutely disgusting," Blaise said with a sneer, before cracking his neck twice in a way that was starting to seem compulsive. Draco could tell that Blaise’d had enough. 

A splash, followed by shouts of dismay.

From behind Richard and the other Auror, Potter sighed, squinting into the dimming light. "Oh, geez, Ron knocked Neville into the water.” He shook his head and muttered under his breath to the other Auror before moving away. “Come on, Henessey,” he said, his voice fading into the distance, with Henessey traipsing away in his footsteps.

"Just be careful in the future," Richard said, his shoulders still stiff and squared. His legs were aggressively splayed, his hand was clutching his wand at his hip, and he gave both Draco and Blaise a hard-eyed stare in turn.

All of that combined was not the right way to act with Blaise when he was so obviously on edge. "Or what?" Blaise replied. Behind him, Ester and her sister stood stock-still, holding onto each other’s arms.

“I’d like to know myself,” Draco said, taking up a position next to Blaise. Between the two of them, a hum of magic began to throb in the air. Draco smiled frostily at the Auror, who stood alone after his colleague had gone to rescue the wizards who’d fallen into the river.

Hermione stepped in between the three of them with a growl, holding out a hand in Blaise and Draco’s direction as she addressed Richard. "Would you stop?" Her voice was both soft and commanding with familiarity.

Her hand was mere centimetres away from touching Draco on the chest.

"Listen to your girlfriend, Richard," Blaise said, his voice filled with venom and glee.

His words made Draco do a double take to take in the belligerent Richard. Was he—yes, he fit the description of the man Draco had almost run down in the restaurant. Young, tall, and he’d missed a spot shaving this morning. Draco’s mouth formed into a sneer at the younger man. Who was this insolent young puppy anyway?

Hermione’s lips were flattened in an irritated line, and a groove deepened between her brows as she whipped her head around to glower at Blaise. "I'm not his girlfriend.”

Richard looked as though she’d slapped him. "Well, that's news to me!"

Hermione’s short intake of air was impatient. "Look, we—we went on  _ one  _ date."

"Looks like you've just been rejected," Draco said, with rather more glee than when he’d started the conversation. "So why don't you trot off back to the stables, unless you plan on making an arrest here?"

"Draco, you shut up," Hermione said, her palm flat out towards him as though braced on an invisible wall. He felt the brush of it against his shirt.

Everyone froze at the sound of his first name on her lips. She backtracked, flushing. "I mean…"

"Are you trying to tell me something,  _ Hermione _ ?" Draco couldn't resist saying with a smirk. A score of bared skin awaited him all along her arm: warm, golden, and inviting. It’d been a long time since he last touched her. He never imagined he would be so gleeful for contact with an arm. A bloody arm. It wasn’t even one of the more salacious bits on the female body. He reached out, about to put a hand under her elbow. 

In the next moment, Draco lost his pleasant fuzzy glow of complacence when she flinched. She jerked her arm away from him and stepped backwards, bumping up against Auror Richard’s cuirass.

Draco saw red. "For God's sake, I barely touched you!" 

Hermione looked just as incensed but for what reason, Draco couldn’t fathom a guess. "I know that!"

“Then what on earth is your problem?” Draco asked, hands on his hips and stepping towards Hermione.

“Maybe you’re her problem.” Richard shouldered forward and slashed a protective arm out in front of Hermione.

Draco’s teeth gleamed, and he took another step forward. His feet were almost on top of the other man’s. “And? How’s that any business of yours?  _ Dick _ ?” The clicking sound on the diminutive of Richard’s name was a loud insult in the breezy night air. “She doesn’t want anything to do with a juvenile wanker like you.” Draco’s eyes were dismissive and disdainful as they perused the younger man. “As she’s just said.”

“I didn’t say anything!” Hermione shrieked, shoving ineffectually at Richard’s arm.

“Or maybe she needs official protection from a murderous Death Eater,” Richard said, his words a soft taunt.

There was a collective intake of air.

Draco did not move an inch, and he didn’t blink. Even the grass had stilled. He felt as though he were encased in a tunnel with the man before him, and everything else had faded into smokey darkness.

"Blaise, can you go on without me?" Draco said, not looking away from Richard. Their faces were less than a handbreadth apart. “I don’t need Dark spells to dismantle this twit.”

“Draco,” Blaise said behind him. Draco felt a hand wrap around his right elbow in an effort to pull him away from his standoff. "We have dinner plans, remember?"

“Oh, but this fellow wants to go a few rounds with the Death Eater,” Draco said softly. He smiled gently and held up his left arm in a sudden move that made Richard flinch to the side. Draco laughed soundlessly. “Have you ever seen it, Richard? Probably not. What are you, twenty?”

“I’m twenty-f—”

Draco cut him off by jerking up his left sleeve, forcing his wrist into the other man’s face. “Here it is,” Draco whispered, hissing out the words. “Look at it.  _ Look at it. _ ”

Richard was frozen in place, his eyes fixated on the Dark Mark on the inside of Draco’s arm.

Draco could only chuckle as Richard’s eyes began to glaze. Even dead, Voldemort’s Mark had the ability to stun regular men in their tracks. Draco knew the feeling well. In the first throes of attaining the Mark, he had lain awake at night, gazing into the skull’s eyes, which seemed to expand the longer you looked at them. When touched, the Mark had felt like someone—or some _ thing _ —else’s skin, like the skin of a snake; a temperature five degrees lower than the skin around it. At Voldemort’s height of power, the skull seemed to loom over one, impressing upon you the power of its master:  _ I am Lord Voldemort _ , it seemed to whisper in a voice that reverberated within your head.  _ Fear me. Fear ME as I am your GOD. _

At the time, in all his initial boyish glee, Draco had only dreams of glory, of being the chosen right hand of the future king.  _ Search me, my lord _ , he’d thought then in his head, fervently, foolishly,  _ for I shall be victorious on YOUR behalf. _

Towards the end, Draco could barely stand to touch his own arm. It’d been like a putrid, festering wound that one was too afraid to look at and possibly see the extent of its rotting state. His right hand had shook as he wrapped up his left arm with thick white gauze to avoid seeing it every day. He’d been covered with sweat by the time he finished and had affixed the ends with a sticking charm. After that, he lay down every night and prayed to wake up to find that his arm had fallen off in his sleep.

Just before Lucius’s trial, Draco had dared to open up the bandages to see the Mark. He flinched away from seeing it, but most of the greatest fear had dissipated when he’d seen it on his father’s arm during his arrest and questioning; a faded and greying mark.

By then the Mark was also faded on Draco’s wrist, but the spell had been sealed into his skin. A curling tendril of compulsive magic stamped onto his arm and bound to no master. Most days, Draco could ignore it. Compared to the very early days, its hypnotic nature was practically nonexistent for him.

For someone like Richard, however, fresh and overly zealous, staring at the Dark Mark for the first time was like being put into a trance. Draco almost laughed with derision at the glazed expression on the man’s face.

Someone tried to push between them with a muttered curse. Draco’s eyes were locked onto Richard’s and didn’t register the third presence until a magical force erupted against his chest. 

He flew backwards and would have gone clear through the field if Blaise had not been standing in the way. As it was, they were both knocked over. Draco’s feet went clear over his head before he tumbled to a halt flat on his front.

Blaise was muttering a litany of curses next to and somewhat beneath Draco. “This is  _ not _ my idea of a good time, Draco.”

Draco eased himself up to a sitting position. Across the way, he was glad to see that Richard was also sitting on the grass, looking as though he had been dipped into the river. On second thought, it was Hermione, spurting water from her wand straight at the Auror’s face in order to shake him out of his trance. 

When that didn’t work, she visibly sighed and aimed another charm at Richard’s face. Possibly an enervation charm. On a conscious person, the charm was doubly strong. Richard’s hair whooshed backwards as though blown by a strong gust of wind, and his entire person was lifted off the ground a few feet before he thumped back down with a thump, blinking and coughing. His mouth formed the words “what the hell!” visible even across the distance.

Draco smirked to himself.

As though sensing his delight, Hermione’s head jerked up, and she pointed her wand at him. “You!” she shouted and began to stomp through the grass towards him.

“Oh, lord,” Blaise muttered next to Draco, and he stood to dust off his robes. “Can you just make nice so we can leave? I know you’ve got a thing about her but just—Ravi’s—I mean, just look at Ravi!”

Obediently, Draco glanced over at Ravi, who was speaking to her sister in a low voice as though nothing untoward had occurred. Not a hair was out of place. The two elegant sisters behaved very much as though things of this nature happened all the time in their homeland. Such equanimity in a foreign land was enviable, and Draco could appreciate such poise.

As physical counterpart, Hermione’s hair had now completely lost its former glossiness. It frizzed in an uncontrollable cloud around her head as she pushed through the tall grass to get to him. “Don’t you dare go anywhere!” she shouted, as though he were trying to escape instead of lounging in readiness for her. She aimed a spell towards him, and Draco wordlessly knocked it aside with his wand.

“Make my apologies to Ravi, won’t you?” Draco said to Blaise without getting up.

Blaise grimaced. His expression as he stared down at Draco was a mixture of pity and resignation. Draco knew his friend well enough that he could read Blaise’s mind even without Legilimency. It was in the very line of Blaise’s mouth and the crease around his eyes: they could have dated the sisters together. Traveled together. If it had worked out between Draco and Ravi, they could have visited Blaise’s mother’s homeland together. 

It was proof of Blaise’s friendship that he put up with all of Draco’s shittiness and never had Draco known it more than in that one instant.

“I give up,” Blaise said with a shake of his head, but his clap on Draco’s back spoke of camaraderie beyond words. “Go deal with your gorgon.”

* * *

They spoke at the same time.

"That?" Draco asked, his derision filling the word until it was as sharp as an arrow. 

"What did you do to him, you pale-faced bastard?" Hermione said at the same time. Then she registered his comment and derision, and she scowled so deeply that it was a sound that carried.

"You dated  _ that _ ?" he asked, undeterred. "He barely looks old enough to shave. Have you gone through our entire age bracket, and now you're just trolling through the newly graduated?"

"He's  _ not _ newly graduated and—and—I don't have to explain myself to you! What were you thinking—"

"He doesn't even look like he's been with a woman before. Probably wanks himself off to pictures in the Prophet, since he doesn't even know there are proper magazines for such activities."

"As you would undoubtedly know," she said, her chin jutting out at him. "And anyway, there's nothing wrong with being a virgin."

"Not when you're fourteen," he said. "But it's a bit of a joke when you're an Auror."

"That's a complete double standard, Malfoy. Have you considered that some women might actually prefer a man who's a virgin?"

" _ Who _ would?" he asked, incredulous.

" _ I _ would."

"No, you wouldn't, Granger." He scoffed at the idea as it passed through his head and scoffed at it again as he pulled himself up to his full height. "Not you."

"What the  _ hell _ does that mean, not me?"

"I mean, you're a woman who's been to the edge and back, who's lived the tale and survived to tell it." He moved closer. Her hair billowed, but she didn't back away from his increasing proximity. "The woman who volunteers in her free time, mind, to parlay with murderous centaurs who'd just as soon as kill us as speak to us. That same woman who doesn't get enough of conflict and masks herself to fight for the right to fuck or be fucked. I hardly think that that unblemished boy is what you're looking for, and what's more, whoever set you up with him is a blind fool."

" _ You don't know me _ ," Hermione said, emphasising every single word. One finger was jabbing the air in front of her, as though ready to poke straight through his skin.

She looked ready to fight about it. 

He wanted to give it to her.

She’d hardly appreciate it here. Hundreds of their acquaintances milled around the place. People she specifically wished to remain unenlightened as to their connection. 

Draco took a step back and squinted through the darkness before he cast a spell through the night. Seconds later, a summoned glass of wine—unspilled—flew into his hand, and he drank it with thirsty gulps, just as though he were the uncivilised barbarian Blaise had accused Ron of being. It gave his hands something to do rather than what they wanted to do, which was to reach for her.

"Done that a lot, have you?" she asked, watching him narrowly.

His lips quirked at one corner. "Noticed my charmwork, have you?"

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Why is your Dark Mark still active?" she asked, her tone one iota less brusque than a moment earlier.

"It's not active," Draco said, chucking aside the empty wine glass with a carelessness that caused Hermione to breathe deeply as though trying to retain her patience. The glass hit the grass with a thump some distance away. "It senses conflict, and  _ Dick  _ isn't well-versed in Occlumency."

"It's sentient? And his name is  _ Richard _ , as you very well know."

"More like lingering traces of magic, unbound to a master."

"It's never done that to anyone who's questioned a Death Eater in custody."

Draco shrugged.

"You know something about it. Don't you?"

"It's Dark Magic, Granger. It sinks into every part of you if you let it. I rejected it in its formative state, so it reaches out to seek out a more lenient host."

"You… rejected it?" Her eyes lingered on his bared arm and Draco began to pull down his sleeve. Her hand reached out and grabbed hold of him, just below the elbow, and stopped him from covering up the Mark. Her thumb lingered on his flesh and brushed over a bump of a scar, a line almost parallel with his elbow and an inch below the Mark. "You—did you try to cut off your arm?" There was horror in her voice.

He didn't respond.  _ Not my arm, no. My life, maybe. _

All he could do was stare down at the top of her head as she felt the ridged line of his self-mutilation with gentle fingertips.

"Don't flinch from me, Granger," he said to the top of her head.

Her fingers stopped moving on his skin, and she dropped his arm to take a step away from him. 

"You seem to want to make me out to be a bad person here when I didn't do a thing to you," he said, pressing his point further.

In retrospect, it was probably inaccurate and not the right thing to say at that juncture. Something disbelieving flashed over her face, and she made a sound like a scoff. Her arms were crossed over her chest. "Ron was being a complete arse, but he hates your father. Lucius tried to have Ginny killed. It's personal to Ron.  _ You  _ hated an entire group of people—Muggleborns—and supported a cause to eradicate them from this earth."

Put like that, it sounded even worse. Or it would have if his veins weren't suddenly bubbling with heat. He quoted something from memory: " _ 'Neque enim lex aequior ulla est, quam necis artifices arte perire sua. _ ' No fairer law in all the land than that death-dealers die by what they've planned." His lips twisted. " _ Necis artifices  _ is a fair variant of Death Eater, isn't it? Should I be strung up and hung then? Like my father?"

Her eyes flickered to his covered arm and a strange expression crossed her face, something like pity and regret. "Shit," she said, covering her face with her hands. "I'm sorry, Malfoy. What Ron said was unforgivable. Your… I'm terribly, terribly sorry about your father—and mother." 

There wasn't a topic he wanted to discuss less. He became slightly belligerent. "Are you, now. You weren’t sorry about it at the restaurant.”

Her voice was quiet when she responded. “I know. And I’m sorry about what I said. Especially given the circumstances.”

“Because they’re dead?” he asked. “Don’t worry; you aren’t the first to jump with glee over it. Funny thing—it was mostly Voldemort’s silent supporters who were happy about their passing.”

Her hand fluttered out towards him and fell away without making contact. A sound bubbled from her throat without forming into words. Around them, the sound of levity and merrymaking had died away as wizards left the Blessing grounds. The hum of transversal magic still hung in the air, enveloping them in an effervescent bubble.

“No—I meant. I’m genuinely sorry for your loss. No one who has had to lose parents should ever hear anything else. I should have never said what I said about them—not now.”

“That’s a bit hypocritical, isn’t it? Considering your views of them.”

"It was an expression of sympathy, Malfoy."

"Right. Well, I suppose I'm not used to hearing it." Especially not from her. As she said, he had evinced hatred of anyone like her in his youth. Only he hadn't acted on his supposed hatred with anyone else.

_ Just her. _

_ Only her. _

"You should be," she said. "Anyone who's lost a parent should get sympathy and not a cold shoulder."

There was no one quite like her.

"You’ve read Ovid's works?" she asked next. Of course she did. Of course she recognised the quote; she’d probably read all his works. "I suppose such early works predate established segregation between wizards and Muggles."

It felt as though he had known her forever, but it was only now, when he was a broken specimen of what he was meant to be that he had to truly  _ see _ her. "They say familiarity breeds contempt," he said, speaking his thoughts aloud. "They lie. It's segregation that perpetuates the hate and fear of the unknown." He stared down at the top of her head, his hand flexing at his side.

She was everything he’d been warned against his entire life. Even if those gatekeepers were no longer alive and of the ruling class, the strictures and cultural barriers were still alive and active in his own mind.

_ And yet _ , he thought, watching her.  _ And yet. _ The phrase slipped unbidden from his lips. "And yet, 'We hunt for things unlawful with swift feet / As if forbidden joys only were sweet.'"

Was that the reason he obsessed so much over her? Was it simply because she was something forbidden and rendered doubly sweet because of her illicit nature? Could all of this—this strange compulsion towards her—melt away the moment he had her?

His breath came and went as he stood there in front of her.

She stared at him as though he had sprouted wings and began to fly around her. There was something in her eyes, a bit like she had never seen him before, and it was exhilarating, intoxicating—far more than the alcohol slowly sinking into his veins. He suddenly wished that he hadn't had that second glass—it was hitting him harder than he initially thought. She was starting to blur slightly around the edges, and it wasn’t just from the magic rising from the ground.

He was starting to think that perhaps this fascination she held for him wasn’t a short-lived thing. That perhaps it’d take an entire wizard’s lifetime to unravel all her depths and crevices.

Before she could become a complete blur, he said what had been on his mind since he first saw her earlier. "I wasn't going to… do anything to you that you didn't consent to." He couldn't bear to explain further, not when all he wanted at that moment was to bear her down into the grass and make her hair even wilder. 

_ How unwelcome would that be to her? _

She broke eye contact first, seemingly flustered by the sudden change in subject. "I know. I know. I mean. I  _ instinctively _ know that. It's not personal to you, you understand. It's a reflex of war or whatever messed up thing happened to us. I'm sure you know what that's about better than any of us."

_ Not personal to you _ . He had never heard more distancing words.  _ It's not you; it's me. _

They didn't speak for a moment and then they both spoke at the same time. She gestured for him to go first.

"Don't treat me like a monster, Granger."

There was something underneath his words that somehow triggered a visible reaction in her. Perhaps his plea echoed the thoughts she’d had in school.  _ I'm not less because I'm a Muggleborn _ , she’d said to him back then; defiant and fierce. She’d been the only Muggleborn who hadn’t yielded to his claims of superiority.

He hadn't listened to her then. Had sneered at her in response. How he regretted it now. Regretted every single thing that he’d believed and acted upon as a child, an adolescent drunk on the power of status and money.

"I  _ know _ you're not a monster, Draco," she said, her tone surprisingly gentle.

Or maybe not so surprisingly, because she wasn't less than him. Maybe she’d always been a touch above, and only now did he realise it so deeply within him that it hurt like a physical ache.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Lunamionny for cleaning up this chapter! I added a few more things after she went through it, so any mistakes you see belong to me along.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For better or worse, Draco continues to be sober.

The only organisation for which Draco put in a personal appearance was the generally unknown Foundation for the Subaltern. 

It had been founded only in recent history, after the rise of Grindelwald, when one Pureblood mother decided to break the ranks and keep her Squib child. She didn't succeed, naturally, but something came out of her maternal love. Her determination eventually led to a charity used to oversee Pureblood children with low levels of intentional magic or who were classified as Squibs. 

The organisation sought to reclassify children who were rejected by Hogwarts by their eleventh birthday. Among other issues, late magical bloomers were a common side-effect of generations of intermarrying. Draco himself had been a small, sickly child; his thin frame that would stand him in good stead while flying was a constant concern for his mother.

Draco Malfoy was a familiar face for this group. After he had greeted Helene Greengrass, one of the organisers and his former classmate's mother, he took a seat near the back.

The meetings of the Subaltern took place inside the ruins of a medieval tower along the Devil’s Causeway in Northumberland. Known in Wizarding Circles as the Devil’s Pele, it appeared only as a half-fallen cairn to Muggle passersby. 

The Hall was a large room with vaulted ceilings and in possession of only one fireplace at the very end next to the screens passage. Outside, the sun had set and the glow of the chandeliers was concentrated near the front. Round tables had been set up in a casual fashion, and the usual austere room gave off a warm and welcoming atmosphere. The event felt like a social gathering rather than an educational presentation. 

The presentation today discussed late-blooming magic, with the main audience being Squibs who had displayed varying levels of accidental magic only after their formative years. Many were there for just a glimpse of hope that they were the same as their family members. All of them had been unable to cast magic with a wand. 

The first part of the discussion brought up basics of wandlore and the testing of an array of wands generously loaned out for trial and error. Many times, the lack of a Hogwarts letter by age eleven meant being labeled a Squib for life and, subsequently, simply discouraged from ever visiting a wand shop. With the slaying of two reputable wandmakers, the postwar world had put wands under an even stricter regulation. No longer could an eleven-year-old simply waltz into a wand shop with a guardian to purchase a wand. Even for an adult, the showing of a broken wand had to be proffered before the Department of Wand Regulation in order for a secondary purchase to be allowed.

Draco had opted for a spot opposite the fireplace; the farthest spot from the crowded buffet spread. It was ingrained behaviour to keep away from crowds pressing at his back. He watched as Helene Greengrass, along with her house-elves, circulated the tables with the trolley of boxed wands. 

Squibs from the surrounding tables would stand as the boxes were floated over to the center of a table, and each person was invited to hover their hand over the selection of wands, trying to “feel” for a connection before taking one up to give it a practise flick.

Halfway through this activity, someone slipped into the seat next to him. Draco, with his arms braced over his chest, shifted with mild irritation. There were more than enough empty seats; was there really a reason for someone to sit beside him?

He turned with a slight frown to his neighbor, only to stop short when he saw who it was. 

Hermione Granger, wearing a deep hood so that only the tip of her nose could be discerned in the dim light falling on their side of the room. 

As with every time he saw her, his entire body suffused with heat and awareness.

He was so taken aback by her appearance that he stared at her for a solid minute in which her apprehensive smile faltered and almost disappeared altogether. She made a motion to flip back her hood, and he quickly reached forward and halted her with a hand around her wrist.

"Outside," he said, although the word was more mouthed than spoken. Her arm felt small and feminine under his grip, and his hold tightened imperceptibly before he let her go. He was reminded of other activities the two of them had shared and pulled himself out of the memory with a quick shake of his head.

Hermione looked perplexed by his demand but acquiesced with a nod.

Before they could step out into the screens passage, however, Helene Greengrass came forward to their empty table. They had reached a break in the proceedings and refreshments were being brought out. 

"You haven't had any of my elf's crumpets, Draco," Helene said to Draco. "I remembered how much you loved them."

Helene Greengrass was a beautiful woman in the way that her daughters were also beautiful—they were poised, collected women who did and said all the right things in social situations; much more so than had Draco's own mother. Although Helene must have been bursting with curiosity at the sight of Draco's hand around a hooded woman's wrist, she only smiled amiably all around and asked if Draco's friend would also care for some crumpets.

"Pardon us, Helene, but I need to speak with my acquaintance about some pressing issues—work-related," he said when Helene looked like she was going to press him to stay.

She made a fluttery, disappointed gesture with an elegant, bejewelled hand. "Well, do come over for tea soon, Draco. Astoria has been asking about you."

Luckily, Hermione stayed silent until he had smiled and made his farewells. She didn't resist as he pulled her out to the passage.

"Why—" she started to ask at one point, but he continued to take her through to the end of the corridor and out the back door. He even cast a silencing charm all around them for good measure.

She turned on him and pulled off her hood. "What was that about?"

"I strongly encourage you to put the hood back on," Draco said, keeping a safe distance from her. He could still smell her from where he stood, that warm, floral scent that reminded him of summer and sunshine. "In fact, I advise you to Apparate home now."

He could tell immediately when she registered his words and his hard tone, because her smile faded and her expression took on a mulish slant. "Why? This is a public domain." 

"Public, yes. Safe, no. Why are you here, Granger?" He crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed her cloaked figure. 

“I want to know more about this group.” Her chin was tilted up in that look of hers that he was beginning to associate with stubbornness. “And I happen to think you owe me.” That time, the look she cast him was heavy with meaning.

His jaw clenched at that reference. He had to force himself to remain motionless, unfidgeting. That was the problem with this woman—she always appeared in front of him when he least expected it and refused to be ignored or shifted aside.

And from the set of her head, she planned to stand here arguing until she won.

His coolness thawed, and he tried to explain. "You shouldn’t be here. These people are bitter; they’re angry people with a lot of baggage. Think of Filch, though he was surely one of the lucky ones."

There were a host of emotions that flickered over Hermione's face: suspicion, truculence, dawning understanding, and then something incredibly uncharacteristic—uncertainty.

"Lucky? He hated his job." Her voice still bore traces of scepticism.

"Lucky because he still had a place in Wizarding England. None of these people would be happy to see a Muggleborn here."

She didn't say anything for a long moment. Draco waited. From the expressions dancing across her face and given what he knew of her, she had a tendency to go flying in to correct what she deemed were injustices. He half expected her to imperiously demand to return to the pele, to what she would claim was a public gathering.

"Harry had—" she started and then paused. "There are Squibs in the Muggle world who _ like _ living there. I know there are."

That would be, of course, her only acquaintance with the complicated world of the Squibs. "You're talking about Potter’s witness for his underage magic trial? No need for the surprise; I remember it well because my father spoke of it constantly in the days before. Yes, Dumbledore had a knack for getting people to do what he wanted. There are Squibs in the Muggle world, and then there are Squibs in the wizarding world. Trust me when I say that they are two very different animals indeed."

When she didn't immediately jump to defend her views, Draco spoke. "Many of the Squibs in the wizarding world felt deeply betrayed by Albus Dumbledore. They had considered him their spokesperson. A few have come out after his death to state that he had promised them equal standing and courses at Hogwarts. None of which, of course, would ever have come to fruition. It is, after all, a school of witchcraft and wizardry." He surprised even himself with the bitterness he heard in his own voice. He had thought his resentment of Dumbledore was long since dormant.

If anything, Hermione's suspicious nature seemed slightly appeased as she seemed to turn over his words in her head. She further surprised him by her neutral point of view: "I know that Professor Dumbledore could be extremely cryptic and—_ laissez-faire _ about things."

That was one euphemistic way to put it. Draco decided to focus on the point at hand. "That's why you shouldn't be here. You may not have known it, but Dumbledore had great plans for you in his next scheme of bridging the magic-Muggle divide. It was well-known with the Board of Governors that he had completely moved on from his previously impassioned cause on behalf of the Squibs and had now begun advocating on behalf of Muggleborns. More than a few of the Squibs felt deceived by his neglect of their plight.”

“That’s—”

“This is a sensitive issue, Granger. For decades, angry Pureblood parents have claimed that Muggleborns are the result of stolen magic. You are everything some of these people wish they had and more—considering how much publicity you’ve received in recent years. Understand?" His eyes slid from her face to the event indoors, which was visible from the textured sheet glass.

How could he make her understand that Squibs in the Muggle world were a completely different entity than those forced to continue to eke out a living surrounded by wizards and were subsequently marginalised? Understand how deep their resentment was for any new groups that were deemed to have replaced them in status and equity? In fact, he was surprised she _ didn't _ already know this, given her propensity to stick her nose everywhere it shouldn't belong.

She might have still been preoccupied with Muggleborn rights on a blood prejudice level, but she had no idea how far-reaching the history of the conflict went. Unsurprisingly, really, considering how little Dumbledore liked to share. His curriculum, Draco had come to find, was similarly lacking.

Her hesitance on this subject was at direct odds with her usual brashness and underscored how little she understood. "I've read that—that they used to blame the Muggle who was around when witches were gestating and the child turned out to not be magical—"

"Exactly. This is that group. This is part of what fueled the ire against the Muggle world. It didn’t start out just as a ‘I’m better than you’ rhetoric. It’s fueled by many, many groups within the magical community, all of whom are battling for scraps of recognition. Did you think goblins were naturally predisposed to guarding wizard gold? No—they lost the power of autonomy when they made bad deals with Muggles and were forced back into their realm."

She looked thoughtful. "None of this—is ever discussed in books.” Her lashes lifted and he was once again the object of her latent activism, stared down with a gaze of burning intensity. “And surely this falsity should be addressed. We should be educated on this. _ They _should be educated!"

"And you plan to march in there now and educate them overnight, is that it?"

"No—of course not. I just thought to familiarise myself with the environment." Something flickered on her face and she stiffened. “Is this why the Board of Governors always vetoes my proposals without a second thought?”

“It could be a factor.” At her furrowed expression, he relented. “But there are always a lot of factors, aren’t there?”

There was a stirring within the hall, and shadows shifted throughout the interior. The testing of the wands was drawing to a close. He turned his attention back to Hermione. "Did you tell anyone you were coming here tonight?"

She flashed him a withering look. "Of course I did. I'm not an idiot. Ron…well, Ron doesn't know anything about the Subaltern—"

"Colour me surprised."

She ignored his sarcastic drawl. "Neville said he's heard things but that he imagines they're misunderstood people."

This time, Draco actually was forced to roll his eyes. "This is your frame of reference, two incompetent Pureblood Gryffindors?"

She took a deep breath that indicated she was going to continue to ignore anything he spouted out that displeased her. "Unsurprisingly, there's not much literature on Squibs except for the outdated treatise 'The Magicless Among Us'—and what a title it is, as though assuming these people are completely without value in the world and—"

"Regardless," he cut in on her snowballing rant. "This is not the place for you. Squibs may not possess a wand, but they are far from powerless, especially if they have managed to live among us for so long. The best course of action would have been to contact Mrs Greengrass first to request a private initial meeting."

"I…" She blinked at him for a moment, undoubtedly taken aback by the fact that anyone had a thought besides her. "That's not a terrible idea. You're right."

"Or Mrs Pucey. She's one of the other organisers. I personally recommend Mrs Greengrass."

"She does seem to have a soft spot for you."

"She has three unmarried daughters," Draco replied with deep cynicism. At her skeptical expression, he shrugged. "In the Pureblood world, the size of my vaults outweighs the fact that I have a tainted past. It's very important to these prospective mothers-in-law that their daughters never have to work a day in their lives. The fact that they shan't have to tend to any nagging in-laws is yet another point in my favour. Shall I list the others?"

She was looking at him so intently that he lifted an eyebrow at her. "What is it?"

"It's just that—you're so lucid and...different. It’s a very different you when you’re abstaining from alcohol."

His heart slammed against his ribcage at her close regard. Was it the wrong moment to notice how fetching she looked, with her hair a nebulous cloud around her head, her cheeks flushed rose-pink? Outwardly, he sought to be as brusque as possible. "You're clearly underestimating Helene Greengrass if you think her high tea for the masses would preclude a wide selection of liquor."

“It’s rather obvious to anyone who knows you,” she said, her tone definitive and sure. “You're more—abrupt, I suppose you could say. But more genuine this way."

It was both a compliment and an insult. Draco didn’t know which way to take it or what jibe to deliver in response to it. That was exactly the problem with sobriety—indecisiveness. He never had half these issues when completely smashed off his feet.

“Well, perhaps it's just an off day for me."

"Undoubtedly," she replied, clearly not wanting to accredit him with any personal merit. But she tempered her word with a small smile.

He looked down at his hands. "I could only undertake one vice at a time. It was starting to—ah—affect my reflexes." What had actually happened was that he had suffered a full-on hallucination during a training session and suffered a head-on assault that he could otherwise have avoided. 

The Healers had impressed on him the life-or-death possibility of mixing medication with his usual dietary habits. Fortunately, it wasn't the first time the Healers had dealt with a situation like his. Now, instead of downing his usual drinks mixed with his delightful uplifting potions throughout the day, he was imbibing a boring medicinal vial in their stead. A new habit to replace the old. 

She smirked, clearly much amused by what he wasn’t saying. "Your ability to perform, you mean?"

"I have no issues in that regard," he said, taking one step closer to her and bringing their toes within centimetres of overlapping. "Either with an audience or without."

"History indicates otherwise.” The way she spoke was almost arch, something that he never thought could be applied to her. She didn't move a breath away. Even the tilt of her head was somewhat provocative. "And I'm sorry, but I just have no empirical evidence to support anything else."

In just about any other woman, that would have been a challenge for him to reach for her.

That smile, that oh-so-familiar smile, was doing things to him, stirring him up in this place where there would be no outlet for gratification. His eyes slid down to her lips and stayed there. Surely it wasn't his imagination that she swayed slightly towards him?

He was tempted to grab her and Apparate home with her and to hell with consequences, except he was very sure that doing something like that would end very badly for him. There was something in him that made him stop warning him that consent was necessary. _ He wasn't those other men, despite what his arm labeled him _.

Sometimes, it was hard to keep his realities straight.

Besides all that, what mattered most was that he wanted her to want him too, to say it out loud, without the pretense of an arranged fight.

There, he admitted it. There it was. He fancied her terribly and nothing in the world could explain how this—this _ urge _ towards her had only grown with time. There was nothing special about her—only there _ was _. 

He could comb the world over and there would only be one Hermione Granger. She was this mad creature comprised entirely of contradictory aspects of insane proportions, and he was equally mad to fancy her this hard. She would replace his other addictions and bind him so firmly that he had nowhere else to turn, nothing else to see but her on his horizon. She was already becoming all that he could think of these days.

He should have taken off running in the opposite direction, but that was the thing with addictions—the sight of your quarry only draws you inexorably in.

It was only her conversational tone that jerked him back to the present. “What makes you want to pick this up as a charity?” she was asking, as though nothing untoward had occurred. 

He blinked at the sudden change in tone. It took him a moment to respond. “Shouldn't I have one?”

“No it's just—it seems unlike you.”

His lips twisted. He thought back to another conversation, another time. _ We’re not friends, Malfoy _. Somehow, that line started to niggle at him more and more. “Because we know each other so well.”

“No, but I think… maybe I—” She looked embarrassed and sounded uncertain as she cut herself off. “Never mind.”

Whatever she had been about to say had been withdrawn upon his sarcasm. What had she been about to say? 

_ We're not friends. _

_ No, but maybe I— _

_ Maybe I _ what _ ? _

Her expression was mulish, closed-off; no doubt a reflection of his own except he'd had years of practice at looking bored, whereas she looked pouty and even adorable.

She also looked ready to leave.

He thought about her secret that probably nobody else knew about. He thought of his own secret that nobody alive knew. Not even Blaise, unless he was actually listening and taking notes whenever Draco was smashed off his head. Somehow, in the light of the fading sun, on this lonely stretch of deserted road, outside of a meeting comprised of disenfranchised Squibs, it seemed fitting that someone else knew about it. That one little girl, wherever she might be, should be known by someone if he were to die tomorrow.

"I may have a sister." The revelation sounded more abrupt than it felt. The moment the words were out, he deeply, deeply regretted speaking them. It wasn't just his secret, it was the secret of generations in the making. He might very well be the last Malfoy, but that was no good reason to let family skeletons air.

She stared at him in surprise and shock. She wasn't even talking, for once.

Knowing all his good reasons for not talking didn't keep his mouth closed. 

"Possibly. I'm not completely certain. It was—just something I overheard between my parents. Something along the lines of ‘you threw away one child, I'm not letting you throw away mine.’ That and—some other things make me think that I have a sibling out there. Half-sibling. Before Father met my mother."

His mouth was running independently of his brain, as it had not done since he was an adolescent and before he started imbibing some delicious, behaviour-modifying potions. Now, though, every rational thought was set free from the bounds of his body as he rambled. "Wizards don't usually have a plethora of children. The magic—sometimes causes hardship in gestation. Consider our school. We were in a class of forty students. In all of England during the year we were born, there were only forty who were deemed to have presented with magic by the time they were eleven."

"Yes," she said, her voice very faint in the stillness of night. 

Of course. The state of magicless offspring was the reason for her appearance tonight. He nodded to her. "Marriage isn't even assured until the first child is born. To be sure of a fruitful union. Some Purebloods take it a step further and try to ensure that it's a magical birth. My father—was married before, I think. The only reason he would put away a child would be if that child were Squib."

Something like dawning realisation crossed her face. "Perhaps that's why you were considered so special to your parents.”

"Yes. Special." Even the word used in attribution to him felt like mockery. "I suppose that's what they deserve for assuming their genes would create a superior human being."

She looked at him with eyes so large and dark and soft that he felt he was drowning in the silence of the moment. It was maddening, this uncontrollable, tremulous feeling that he had just laid his soul bare. 

He tried to shake himself out of it.

This—wasn't anything. Nothing major or deep or earth-shattering. Rather shameful, perhaps, but that was all. And who was there to feel ashamed? Only him. There was no one else left to care about the family name, no one but a plethora of family ghosts in their two-dimensional portraits to nag if he ran it down into the ground with his wastrel living. 

He preferred it that way. He had never liked sharing. Why would he have assumed he would like a sibling? Everything now belonged to him: the properties, the vaults, the bottomless riches that he could never drain even in two hundred years, the infamy of generations of heinous behaviour that now only had his shoulders to bear.

She cleared her throat. "Have you ever thought of using some sort of a spell?”

His smile was a cynical twist. "A blood spell? And test every single Squib in England? A former Death Eater going around collecting the blood of innocent magicless individuals? You do think highly of me, don't you?"

Hermione shook her head and gave a short laugh, as though at herself. "Right. Sorry. I suppose that isn't the most practical scenario."

He should have regretted opening his mouth, but now that it was in the open, he realised there was no one else that could understand his quandary more than her. Still, he stared off into the distance rather than look directly at her. "There's nothing I can do about it. I've combed the family records after my parents' deaths and I can't find anything, not a fund or vault or any information. For all I know, my father paid someone to have her killed."

"Then how do you know they’re a she?"

The admission felt pried out of him. "I've always—rather liked the idea of an older sister."

Hermione hadn't blinked the entire time he had spoken. He thought that it was possible that there was more intensity and fire in her eyes than existed in a far-off star that only shone intermittently on clear nights. Certainly, he was starting to feel that she saw more of him than what had been laid bare to the cosmos and back in all those horrible years leading up to the war and after. It was a terribly vulnerable feeling that he sought to mitigate with a small sneer that was starting to feel like it wasn't even forming right.

"I mean…" she said slowly. "I think—I think this here—" she gestured to the Pele tower "—may honestly be the nicest thing you've ever done."

Damned with faint praise. What had he been thinking, revealing all this anyway? It was just that, when he wasn't surrounded by crowds and festivity, it really began to seem as though life stretched in front of him in one long, lonely line. And she—

She did something to him. Something he didn't even want to acknowledge to himself.

"As a former Death Eater, you mean?" It came off as a disdainful scoff.

"No, as Draco Malfoy."

He felt embarrassed, for some odd reason. As though there was a former barrier between them despite all that they had already shared and seen of each other. Now, somehow that wall was falling to bits, and it was becoming harder to stay aloof and self-contained. It was one thing when she regularly mocked him and derided him. How could he stay indifferent if she started to compliment him? "Don't let it be widely known, will you?"

"I don't know if people would believe me," she said with just as much spirit as ever. Always good for his ego. She let out a breath of air. Her lashes lifted; her eyes flicked to his before darting away again as she very evidently mulled over something on her mind.

Then, surprisingly: "You haven't been back."

He played dumb. "Back where?"

She gave him a speaking look and didn't dignify his comment with elaborations. "Did you decide you didn't need it after all?"

"Do you miss my pretty cock, Granger?" The question slipped out of him in a silky whisper. 

Her compliments in the ring last time had rung over and over in his head whenever he tried to put her—and the whole debacle—out of his mind. 

_ Long. _

_ Thick. _

_ Exceptionally pretty. _

Draco didn't even know when that last appellation started applying to the woman standing before him. When had she gone from an annoying itch in his younger years to being someone who kept him awake at night?

She shook her head a bit as though trying to rise above his petty, immature jibe. "I never...I just wanted to explain that—well, why I acted the way I did the—er, the last time you were there, I suppose." As cool a tone as she could manage, two spots of red still dotted her cheeks.

At her words and the air of haughtiness, Draco was close to reacting with all the disdain a rejected male could evince. Only, he had never felt such a need to hear someone's excuses.

"Some people would probably say I put myself in the situation when I joined a sex fighting ring. But a little part of it—I guess—is me putting myself in a situation where the stakes are high and could be even higher. To see if physically I'd be able to handle myself."

It was hard to prevent the scoff from rising to his lips. "You have magic, Granger. You'd always be able to handle yourself."

"Not always. And I'm not just talking about the war but sometimes just walking about in the city around Muggles…" She let out a little breath of air before forging on, as though deciding to tell him this one shocking piece of information. "I didn't even want to tell you this before—" she broke off and the way she blinked at some image in the distance made him realise she was remembering their last conversation. "Before. I didn't want to give you yet another reason to judge Muggles. But there has been a time or two when knowing defensive strategies have saved me from awkward situations."

He would have taken offense at her pointed insinuation except her emphasis on _ before _ imbued her entire comment with newness. 

"It makes me think—well, _ you _ made me think. That there are some women out there who are even worse off than I am." Her glance towards the back door of the Pele tower had never been so rife with meaning. 

All of a sudden, Draco's head filled with images of the past. Of Muggles running and screaming. Of the cackles of Death Eaters as they Apparated and Disapparated all around. Of hands grabbing at the clothes of Muggle women as they stumbled and fell.

He closed his eyes as his breathing started to become faint. He had visited a host of Squib parlors with Blaise. What if they were put into situations they couldn't escape? The places had always made him cringe with guilt, but he had never been able to pinpoint exactly why. 

He grew cold with the thought. 

It was the sound of her clearing her throat that broke him from his trance. "I'm not—I'm not blaming you for anything. I just wanted you to know..._ why _."

Lights flickered inside the tower as people moved around. They had been talking for far longer than they should have. Soon, their privacy would be breached. But knowing that didn't prompt him to move a muscle. 

"You're doing a good thing here, Draco," she said. "Let me know if you need any help."

As always, she had the ability to leave him completely speechless.

But never more so than the slight squeeze she gave his arm as she passed him. It was the first time she had ever touched him voluntarily.

His arm tingled for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, this chapter comes with thanks to disenchantedglow and kahcicamera for alpha-work, and lunamionny for beta-work. They're the best! 
> 
> I've been trying to update weekly, but in the next few weeks, due to RL issues, I'm going to have to update biweekly (once every two weeks). Sorry! Hopefully everyone's doing well out there in their corner of the world.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione goes to the Manor.

In the days that followed, Draco slowly became involved in almost every single one of Hermione’s causes.

It first started with the Sentient Beasts Association. 

Hermione’s owl had crossed his desk one day, sending him into a tailspin once he saw her name at the bottom before going back to read the contents. 

_ Since discovering your charitable streak, I've been wondering if you would be interested in other philanthropic ventures? No pressure. _

It was attached to a flier asking for involvement to help with “oppressed beings.” 

Nothing personal about it.

Nothing to get into a tizzy over.

Yet his breath came and went in a whoosh of air as he read and reread the note. Very polite, almost unlike her as per their past dealings. The rational part of his brain said that the likely scenario was her requesting monetary contributions. Presumably, she was always unfailingly polite to possible donors.

He reminded himself of this when he casually strolled into the SBA meeting fifteen minutes late to find it going in full force. If full meant pitiful.

Hermione looked disgruntled after her speech, which was no wonder. Only three representatives in the Sentient Beasts Association had shown up—two house-elves, trembling in their tea-towel shifts, and a baby grindylow in a large water tank that one of the house-elves brought with him.

She didn’t even muster up the energy to growl a greeting at him when he stopped in front of her chair after the meeting.

He considered her bent head for a long moment before he sat down in the chair in front of her. “So, what was the point of that? To get these—er, creatures—to petition the Ministry for their very own school and classification?”

There was something he disliked about the discouraged hunch of her shoulders, but he had to admire how she tried to rally upon hearing his question. Even dispirited, she still understood the benefit of speaking clearly to promote her cause before a well-heeled philanthropist-to-be. “Once they have their own school, the Ministry will stop enforcing this legalised slavery of house-elves.” She began her spiel with reluctance but eventually her tone perked up. 

“And the grindylow?”

“No other house-elf wanted to come,” she said, deflating again and going back to staring down at the ground. Even her hair looked less aggressive today.

Draco surveyed the area of the Ministry cantina that had been specifically cordoned off for this purpose. He supposed she must have gone through her supervisor somehow to commandeer the place for four o’clock in the afternoon. The only mystery was how empty it was, for being held within the Ministry itself. It came to him a little while later that every third Friday was the day on which the entire Department of Law Enforcement had their game night at the pub. Which probably had been a factor in her managing to borrow this area in the first place. Fridays were simply not an ideal day to host events within the workplace; even he knew that, layabout that he was. Undoubtedly, she had her own reasons for choosing this day.

He also wondered if anyone had thought to question the conflict of interest that arose from her being in the Legal Department in the Ministry and also helping the SBA. Surely the legal implications had occurred to someone, corrupt as the Ministry undoubtedly was. Perhaps nobody cared enough to intervene.

Not only that, he found himself pondering the paucity of the flier itself. Drawing up advertising gimmicks was definitely not one of Hermione’s talents. The flier was filled with words and more words, some capitalised and some in smaller letters, none of which attracted the eye. 

As he sat there, he mentally compared the Subaltern’s fancy spread compared with what was offered here; a sad platter of tasteless-looking biscuits and crisps with a jug of pumpkin juice next to a stack of paper cups. And tea. She hadn't forgotten the tea. 

There was little doubt in his mind that she had paid for everything herself. Party-hosting was clearly not among her gifts either. She had spent all her time researching legal precedents and historical anecdotes and formatting her paper into neat little scrolls complete with relevant pictures that she had completely failed in the advertising aspect.

She had guts, Hermione Granger.

But that was something that he had been shown already, time and again.

“Did you pay for all this yourself?” he asked, holding up the flier in his hand.

Hermione looked impatient. “If you’re insinuating that I’d be stupid enough to fund everything out of my own pocket, the answer is that I—we had sponsors. They recently pulled out because...well, because they thought Harry Potter was involved and they realised that he wasn’t.”

“Are you sure this isn’t all going directly into your own pocket?” His voice was dry.

He could feel her stiffening up all over. “If you’d like to check the accounts for this organisation, you’re more than welcome to do so. Simply because this was a poor turn-out does not mean—”

"So you usually have three house elves instead of two?"

Her chin lifted. “Usually, a whole host of people from the Legal Department comes. There are many who are very invested in the rights of others, Malfoy.”

He glanced around the empty room. The house-elves had left as soon as Hermione sat down. “Immensely uncompelling evidence, Granger. Have you ever asked house-elves what they want to do with themselves?” He stepped away from her and stood in front of the chalkboard, to which she had affixed various posters. _ Know Your Rights! _ one of them said. _ Speak to someone in the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures if you’re unsure whether your employer is guilty of legal misconduct. All inquiries WILL be anonymous. _

“Unfortunately, they usually choose not to speak to people who aren’t their—owners.” 

“You’re free to interview my elves,” he said. “I think you’ll find that they enjoy having a master.”

She did look at him then, a brief searching look that felt as tangible as a touch. “Are you sure? Have you coached them on what to say in the event of an interrogation?”

“Are you doubting your abilities to see through any possible lies?”

“Not at all. And you’re willing to—free your elves if they are unhappy in your household, acting as slaves?” Her head was tilted to one side, and her expression was distinctly challenging.

“Perfectly willing,” he replied. 

Her upper body was swivelled in his direction, with her chin resting on the tips of two fingers. Her other arm lay on the armrest closest to him, and he eyed her slim fingers tap tap tapping on the wood. "You’re on, Malfoy. In fact, let’s make it interesting. If I can convince _ one _of your house-elves that freedom is better than slavery, then you have to free them all.”

He had at least twenty house-elves bound to the Malfoy Manor, but he suspected she knew that already. “From Malfoy Manor?”

Her eyes narrowed a little as she considered this. He could see the calculations going on in her head as she worked out the significance of his question, undoubtedly gauging exactly how many properties and how many house-elves he owned in total. The properties outside England weren’t even in the records. The truth was, he himself didn’t quite know the exact number. “For a start,” she said finally.

“And if you can’t convince them?”

She tossed her hair in a show of insouciance that made him long to grab her and throw her down on the closest horizontal surface. “Some conditions: you have to _ order _ them to tell the truth. And they’ll have standard recompense for leaving your household—equivalent to a Ministry worker for the same number of years.”

His eyebrows lifted. “This is beginning to sound rather hefty in value. And why should I do any of this?”

“Another favour?” she asked with a sweet smile.

“I already have one and it hasn’t been called in yet.”

“What do you want then?” she asked.

A very good question. He let the silence reign as he pretended to think about it. When she lifted her hair away from her face to push it behind her shoulder, he reached out with the hand nearest her to lift the fingers idly tapping away on the armrest. “Dinner,” he said. 

_ Followed by… _

It really wasn’t the place to let his imagination take over, so he turned businesslike at once and released her fingers.

She was surprised by his suggestion, visibly so. Something indefinable flickered over her face and then she smiled again. “You’re on. Let’s go.”

Now that did take him aback. “Right now?”

“No time like the present.” This time, her smile was triumphant. 

It was clear she thought that giving him the jump like this was giving her a leg up. He almost couldn’t hold back his own amusement at how pleased she looked. He lazily unfolded himself from the chair and stood. “As soon as you’re ready.”

She lifted an eyebrow and gave a wave of her wand. Instantly, the items all around the room began to pack themselves up. Within seconds, they were folded and shuffled into a box the size of a book that she then stuffed into the bag that she always carried. Then she stood and brushed off her skirt as though she were ready for a stroll in the park. “I’m ready now.”

They couldn’t Disapparate from the Ministry, so they made their way out of the cafeteria and down the corridors towards the Atrium. At one point, he opened the door for her almost right into the face of someone running past. 

Ron Weasley came to a shuddering halt with a litany of mumbles. Then he blinked and narrowed his eyes. “Oh—it’s you, Malfoy.” The implication of their bumping into each other seemed to hit Weasley and he scratched his head. “Listen, about the other night. The Blessing Ceremony. I don’t rightly remember much, but they told me that I should—”

Going by his uncomfortable and sheepish countenance, what Weasley planned on spewing in his usual fumbling manner was probably an awkward but sincere apology. It was cut abruptly off when Hermione Granger appeared behind Draco. Weasley came to a complete stop and blinked at the two of them in turn. An impatient rejoinder was just on the tip of Draco’s tongue.

“Hermione.” Weasley’s eyebrows were raised as his eyes flashed between the two of them. Then they lowered in suspicion. “What are you still doing around here?”

“The question is,” Hermione immediately shot back, “what are _ you _ doing here, when you told me you couldn’t make it to my SBA meeting?”

“_ SBA _? What’s that again?”

“_ Sentient Beasts _, Ron.” Hermione put just enough emphasis on the words to sound testy.

“Blimey, you’re in so many of them—” Once again, Weasley cut himself off, this time even taking a step backwards clearly because of the look on Hermione’s face. “Er, I’d forgotten something in the office and had to dash back for it. We’re all down at the pub. You coming?”

“No.” Hermione was smiling that dangerous, sweet smile again. Draco was beginning to be intimately familiar with that smile; it was the same one she had given him as she was negotiating terms for the freeing of all his house-elves. “I’m going over to Ma—Draco’s home.”

The surprise on Weasley’s face this time was almost comical. “Malfoy Manor? You can’t go there, Hermione. It’s—dangerous. There are probably hexes and wards there that could—”

“Actually—” Draco said at the same time Hermione said, “I highly doubt that.”

Hermione glanced at Draco before turning back to Weasley. “I agree with Malfoy,” she said again. “Wasn’t it completely checked over by the Law Enforcement after the war?”

Her pointed tone implied that if Weasley’s department knew what they were doing, the Manor should be completely safe. Weasley evidently didn’t see things her way.

“I think I should go with you.” Weasley sounded reluctant, and his side glance over at Draco showed he was dubious about his welcome. Draco was just about to retort that _ he wasn’t invited _. “Right. Malfoy. I was going to say...it turns out I was completely blotto that day. The Blessing Ceremony. If I said anything that hurt your feelings…”

Draco rolled his eyes. There was no doubt that Weasley had started out uncomfortable with the niceties but perfectly sincere. Now, however, his choice of words indicated that Draco was a nancy boy if anything Weasley said affected him. “You’re not invited, Weasley.” Then he flashed a perfectly sweet and insincere smile of his own.

“Yes, Ron,” Hermione said immediately on the heels of that. “You’re not invited. Especially since you couldn’t be bothered to show up at my meeting but now you’re interested if I’m liable to go somewhere possibly dangerous.” She made a scoffing sound and very purposefully linked her arm around Draco’s elbow.

If Weasley’s eyes bulged out any more, Draco thought, the cleaning staff would be scooping them off the floor when they came by. “Merlin’s balls,” Weasley said, sounding impatient and annoyed. “You belong to like fifteen billion associations, Hermione! How am I supposed to go to all of them? I work, you know.” His angry implication and annoyed side glance tried to insinuate that Draco did not.

Draco didn’t feel like arguing with him. He _ did _ work; just, admittedly, he didn’t _ have _ to.

It was Hermione who began to drag Draco away. “Have fun at the pub,” she said over her shoulder in a way that was decidedly sarcastic. Her ending words definitely rang of irony. “I’m sure it’s _ completely mandatory _ to attend.”

They walked at double the pace they had started when they left the cafeteria. “You weren’t joking when you said he was protective,” Draco said once he was reasonably certain they were out of earshot.

“Yes,” was all Hermione said in a curt voice. “And not for the right reasons, either.”

A terrible thought struck him then. “You aren’t...in love with him?” he said, and it was a question rather than a statement.

Even more terrible was how long Hermione took to answer that. “I might have thought I was at some point,” she said finally. “But he doesn’t really understand who I am. Not really.”

“No,” Draco said.

_ Not like me _, he thought.

His arm twitched under her hand at that thought. 

And at the fact that she was going with him to his home.

* * *

His first elated reaction was dimmed when he realised what that actually meant.

Malfoy Manor. 

The place where so many atrocities had occurred. 

He had been the perpetrator of some of them. It was one of the reasons that he was unable to be within its halls for long. Usually, he Apparated directly into the Long Gallery in the Manor, but one could only Floo from the Ministry. Memories surged through him as he emerged from the fireplace and into the entrance hall. 

The entryway looked simultaneously smaller and larger than he’d remembered. He still remembered that he had gotten lost in the house when he was very young and had made a very big fuss about it, refusing to calm down until he had been given enough sweets to rot his teeth right out, had he not been a wizard.

He still remembered that summer, which was undoubtedly the worst summer of his life. How young he had been then. Brash and laughing when he returned home from school. Full of the happenings that had occurred just before school broke for the summer. Potter had collapsed in the middle of exams and then been found breaking into the interim Headmistress’s office. _ He _ had been responsible for discovering it. Rumour was that Potter was breaking down under the stress of infamy. 

Instead, it was his white-faced mother who came to meet him at the station, sandwiched between Theodore Nott, Sr. and someone Draco faintly recognised as one of his father’s Ministry cronies.

Draco had addressed Theo’s father first. “Sir,” he said with a polite nod. He automatically glanced around for his classmate but then, too excited to wait any longer, he dropped his voice down to an urgent whisper. “Is it true? They’re all saying that You-Know-Who is back!” Of course Dumbledore was a doddering fool and anything he said in front of the school could be discounted by half. Dolores Umbridge might have been as unattractive as a toad and a Halfblood to boot, but the unspoken rule of Slytherin was to admire ambition in all its forms, and for that he was deeply respectful of the professor.

It was like being caught in the middle of a Wizarding Wireless serial. All his life, he had been told of the Dark Lord’s infamous powers—it had been a tale straight out of his fairy books, complete with the git hero in the form of Harry Potter.

He hadn’t expected—not then—that his life would turn _ into _a fairy tale, or rather, a dark version of one. The version that didn’t make it to publishing, for fear it would frighten young children. The version that was only whispered at night under the covers with your mates or over the flickering flames of an open fire.

He hadn’t expected to be chaperoned home by Nott and Yaxley. He had furthermore never expected to become a Death Eater himself.

For most of his life, the fact that his father was a Death Eater was a fact open to the public, as was Lucius’s acquittal and the pardons of numerous other Death Eaters. The Dark Lord, they had all whispered, had mental powers beyond what anyone could have expected. They had all been deceived, was the unanimous mourning in the wake of the first war of the second millenium. 

Draco was so sunk in his thoughts that he almost forgot that he had finally achieved what was the goal of a few months of pure obsession. Hermione Granger walked silently beside him, the only sound the click-clack of her heels on the marble floors to indicate she was awake and aware. He wondered if she could tell that the Manor was in a state of deep neglect. Portraits held slumbering figures, despite the fact that it had only just gone six o’clock. Many of the paintings were empty and quiet. There hung about the place a sound of oppressive silence and an echoing quality with only the flickering of light to symbolise life. There was no soft waving of curtains in the breeze from open windows, and a marked absence of the thumping of old pipes and gurgling drains failed to break up the quiet.

Other than that, the house-elves kept the place in excellent shape. He would deeply hate to lose them though their absence meant one less responsibility on his shoulders. Malfoy Manor was his, etched in his blood and veins, running through his body in ways that were indelible. 

It was all his now, the properties and the bottomless vaults that supposedly took the sting away from the infamy, the shame, and the complete solitude of being the last Malfoy.

They passed through room after room before Hermione broke the silence.

“Do you regret it?” she asked. The question bounced off the walls and echoed through the chamber. 

The sound of the house coming alive met her inquisition first: the rustling of fabric, the clearing of a throat, the grunting of old portraits coming awake at the end of silence—and finally speech. There were finally signs of life again in the occupants of this long-abandoned place.

“Who’s there?” a voice asked from out in the passage, and that question was picked up and tossed about by other portraits, chiming in for a conversation.

He turned to face her, but it was only her profile that he saw. Somehow, he had expected those luminous eyes to be fixed on him, a thoughtful regard on her face as she tried to puzzle out this next project. 

“I should,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? But the truth of the matter is, as many times as I’ve gone over everything in my head, I can’t think of how I could have managed to do anything differently and have it turn out better.”

He was probably supposed to regret it all, but he stood by his answer.

She didn’t flinch. Her calm was older than the earth. “That’s how it often is with life and our linear existence.”

“Turning philosophical on me?” He wasn’t certain exactly what he had expected her to say in response. In retrospect, he had been rather more honest with her than he usually was in company. She could have adopted any particular countenance with him; disdain of the sort he usually received when it came to his background, or her usual airy sarcasm. He should have known that it never was what he expected, not from her.

He was glad that his first time back in the main house in who knows how long was accompanied by her; crazy, extreme Granger with her unexpected ways.

“Life is what you make of it,” she said, and this time she did turn to look him full in his face. “There’s no room for regrets.”

She had a talent for that sometimes; for saying the most practical statements that went against every Gryffindor ideal. Every time he expected her to say something trite and idealistic, she had to surprise him in a way that knocked him off his balance. If she had been anyone but Hermione Granger, he thought he’d have been completely head over heels already.

As it was, he thought that perhaps it no longer mattered what her name was, as long as she didn’t care what _ his _ name was.

The frightening thought hit him as hard as a sucker punch to the middle.

He smiled his most charming smile to cover up his discomfiture. “Don’t tell me you’ve bought into my sad little story act?”

It was just like her not to flirt and smile and say something pretty. She leveled a look at him. “I feel like you’ve bought your own act. That’s what you do every day, isn’t it? You wallow in your own grief and hide away from society.”

“That’s a bit like calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, it’s true. For both of us.”

“Misery loves company, yes?” 

“If you apologised, it’d be easier for you to forgive yourself.”

“Apologise...to whom? To you? To Dumbledore? To the entire world? Or to my parents? You see, Granger, I’m wronging someone no matter what I do.”

“You should have been sorted into Gryffindor with that kind of bull-headed determination to stick to your sorry depressed bubble. What? Why are you laughing?"

“Well, funny story. Actually, it wasn’t funny back then, but now it is. The Sorting Hat almost put me in Gryffindor.”  
  


She laughed heartily at that. “What happened?”

“I threatened it, naturally. Asked if it knew who my father was, and how I’d simply have my father come up to the school and get rid of it. It changed its tune rather quickly after that.”

“That’s something we have in common, you know,” she said in the next moment. 

He looked at her curiously. “In what way?”

“Well, actually—I didn’t want to be in Slytherin, because Salazar Slytherin was _ infamous _, I suppose you could say, for being so dramatic about the whole thing and leaving the school. So when the Sorting Hat said that my ambition and cunning could qualify me to be in Slytherin, I told him that putting a Muggleborn there would be practically an act of sabotage and potentially homicide. I was overstating the case at the time, or so I thought. Turns out that the Hat knew what was about to happen.” She rolled her eyes and waved her hand, relegating the entire war to a hand gesture.

“You threatened the Sorting Hat?”

“Not just us, apparently,” she said with a little smile that seemed to hint at other stories and memories. She shook her head as though to bring herself to the present. “It’s funny now, but honestly, you were such an annoying prat.”

“Were?”

“Are.”

“You can’t take it back now, Granger. You almost gave me a compliment. I’m keeping it.”

"You can keep it." Then she said in a voice that was slightly diffident, a softer tone than usual, "But I meant that you should apologise to that sixteen-year-old you that you're blaming for all your mistakes."

She was a physical creature; he knew this about her already. But what she did then still surprised him—she held out a hand to him. When he didn’t move, she raised her eyebrows and beckoned him forward. 

He still had no idea what she intended, but he moved a step closer. She took his left hand and pulled it towards her. He didn’t move as she pushed up his sleeve to reveal his Dark Mark. 

It took no small amount of composure to stay unmoving as she took out her wand and traced over the outline of the Dark Mark. She murmured something and a thin mist emerged from the tip of her wand and brushed over his arm with a cool, tickling sensation.

His hand twitched in her soft grasp, but her fingers tightened around his hand. He stared down at those fingers, at how small they were next to his, how her skin appeared golden-beige next to his, with his blue veins criss-crossing under the pale skin. He swallowed hard and without thinking, his hand clenched and he gripped the tip of one of her fingers that lay across his palm. 

She glanced up at him then. “Wait,” she said, not withdrawing. 

Obediently, he waited, and he watched as his Dark Mark became obscured beneath a pattern of twisting and curling lines. Under his eyes, the skull and the snake that had featured in so many of his nightmares started to melt into another design altogether, one that seemed to look like a half-closed long-stemmed flower.

He saw her cheeks curve as she began to smile. “There,” she said. “It’s my special Granger Death Eater benediction. It’s not much, only a soothing charm really. I thought you could use it, and also, doesn’t it look pretty? You can vanish it at any time. It’s—well, you’ll think it silly, but I’ve found that it really works.”

“It’s exceptionally pretty,” he agreed, but he wasn’t looking at his arm. He was looking at how light-hearted she seemed by her small fanciful act. She seemed to think that murmuring a few words over his Dark Mark could rid him of all the pain and suffering that it had brought him, and the thought should have been ridiculous in and of itself. Only, he couldn’t help but watch her as she smiled lightly, turning his wrist one way and then the other, admiring her handiwork.

He couldn’t help but think that she was the one who was exceptionally pretty, and it had nothing to do with how much he wanted to bed her.

She chuckled, looking pleased with herself. She pulled up her own sleeve to show him the curling design on the inside of her left arm. "We’ve matching ones now,” she said. “Or at least until I figure out how to work on different designs. Calla lily is supposed to mean healing and forgiveness. I think that’s something we can both work on.”

“I’ll start by forgiving you for drawing a flower on me,” he said, and he felt almost light-headed with happiness when she laughed.

For the first time since he had begun lusting for her, he felt protective of this, of her, of how she made him feel—as though he were someone _ real _ again, instead of the version he came across in the media. A person discussed and analyzed as though, ever since he’d been born, his life had been open for discussion, as though the points raised in theory made them as ironclad as fact. Was he a tortured naive boy or a bullying blood purist through and through? Sometimes he didn’t know himself. 

Sometimes he thought he was all of it, that each version held a grain of truth that nobody, not even he, understood fully. Perhaps written words had a limit to their accuracy in portraying him and maybe that was just it, that he wasn’t someone who could be fully written down. Like her, he couldn’t be completely encompassed by a few words, and all her various odds and ends made him realise that it was possible to be just _ slightly _a monster without becoming the devil.

When it had all begun, he couldn’t even say anymore. She had been his counterpart in school, like looking into a mirror and finding some things so similar that it rankled and some things that should have been there that weren’t and were the complete inverse of him. They had the same irritating interests and mannerisms that hadn’t mattered and were the exact opposite in all the things that did matter. 

Perhaps he had it all wrong, and it was backwards. At least, it certainly felt as though he had been constantly proven wrong the older he became, in ways that his father had never had the foresight to inform him. Things that had seemed so important to him when he was growing up, like his bloodline, his family name, his money, and who he knew, gradually decreased in importance so that for a very long time, he had lost all sense of who he was and what mattered to him. Until it seemed that he drifted from day to day in a state of semi-consciousness.

It had gone spinning back in time to when this same girl had put him in his place. Now she was framing his worth again. Maybe she was always going to behave in ways completely antithetical to his expectations.

She wasn’t just another woman, not Hermione Granger. He had always wanted, in some way, her good opinion and her acceptance of him. Here, today, she had demonstrated a willingness to be close to him in a time and age when nobody wanted anything from him. He hadn’t realised until just this moment how alone he had been for the past few years, despite Blaise’s frequent company.

He could still remember the last time a matron at the Ministry did a double-take at him. When she recognised him, she had sniffed, drawing her robes away from him as though he had the power to contaminate her.

He still remembered her. Augusta Longbottom. She was as old as the hills, and he still remembered a time, very briefly, when he and Neville had been thrown together at a gathering when he was little.

Draco felt a slight twinge of shame whenever he thought of his own actions as a child. In front of the elders, he had smiled charmingly and said all the right things. 

At that particular time, he had been teasing Neville by levitating his drawing parchment into the air with a toy wand. It was a toy that “imitated” a real wand, and it came with a guarantee to make things float. Neville had been blubbering when Augusta came in. Immediately, Draco let the parchment slowly sink down in front of Neville. “There you go, Nev,” he said, giving the other boy a hearty pat on the back. “I’ve just helped you retrieve it from where you threw it. Nothing to cry about.” 

He had turned to smile beatifically at Neville’s grandmother, who silently watched them with her hands down at her side. 

“Draco Malfoy, I take it,” she said finally, making her way slowly into the room. 

“I’ve just been helping Neville here with his drawing,” Draco said. When Neville opened his mouth to say something, he neatly pinched the back of Neville’s upper arm so that Neville let out a low whimper.

“Have you?” Grandmother Longbottom said. “Ever so helpful, the Malfoys. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”

At the time, Draco had preened at what he perceived was a compliment. Lucius Malfoy enjoyed a very high standing as one of the Minister’s consultants. In some circles, he was whispered to be the “kingmaker.” Whenever Draco heard that, he couldn’t help but shiver with the power inherent in such a title. To be his father had been the culmination of all of his ambitions from the moment people began to see their physical resemblance. 

“You mean my father, I presume,” young Draco had said to Neville’s grandmother. He left Neville cowering over his parchment to walk over to her, his head tilted back to take in her superior height. “He’s a very important man, you know. _ I’m _going to be just like him.”

“I can see that you no doubt shall be,” she had said, with heavy irony that had escaped him at that age. “Neville, come. Stop that blubbering over a useless piece of paper.”

At the Ministry, two decades later, Augusta Longbottom had drawn herself away from him. _ I was right _, had been written all over her face and in her sniff.

Draco had felt that condemnation as a shaft to his heart. _ I was right too. _ Only he hadn’t known how he would grow up to wish that he were wrong.

All this time, he had felt the twin bonds of fate and heredity lash him down, as surely as iron bound the fey. Never had he considered that he could be something other than a failed copy of his father. It seemed strange and fitting that it would be Hermione Granger, she who had been predestined to be his enemy, to wave a wand over him and tell him that he didn’t always have to be this way. Perhaps, in a way, it had to be she that he listened to.

“Are you trying to delay my interviews of your house-elves?” Hermione asked, drawing him back to the present. He could see the slight laugh lines at the corner of her eyes.

“Is it working?”

She laughed aloud that time. “Rather more than I’d like. But I’m actually rather hungry now. So I do hope you plan on feeding me at some point.”

“Absolutely I will,” he said, willing his hand to fall back down to his side and not reach out to pull her into his embrace as he wanted to. “At some point.” 

“And let’s not forget the purpose of my being here,” she said, and gave him a prompting look. “The interview with the elves, remember?”

She looked so businesslike that he couldn’t help but recall the fact that she’d only come for the house-elves, no matter how much he had wanted it otherwise. The house-elves, and Weasley’s goading. 

But that didn’t matter. He was more persistent than Weasley or Hermione. 

He couldn’t help but squeeze her hand before dropping it and taking a step back from her, although it took every inch of his wavering will to do so. “Of course. We have all the time in the world.”

He believed it, too. It was all the time in the world to a man who had condemned himself as the culmination of eons of dastardly work and was, only now, seeing the light of absolution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, disenchantedglow, kahcicamera, and lunamionny, for all your help.
> 
> Thank you for following along with this trashy adventure. The next update will be the 24th of 25th of this month.


	14. Chapter 14

By the time Blaise tracked him down a month later, Draco had gone from seeing Hermione Granger occasionally to several times a week. 

Autumn that year was marked with a warm spell that lasted well into October. The south of England was lovely and temperate, marked with the occasional seasonal rains. It was the perfect weather to tour the gardens at Malfoy Manor under the guise of getting cuttings for Hermione.

That day, they were in the Poison Garden, which made up ten hectares within the greater gardens. Most of the area had fallen into disrepair due to the lack of upkeep during the previous years, and Draco felt almost ashamed as he led the way under the green-canopied walkway which circled around to the most formidable plants. 

“I’ve never had any interest in herbology, I suppose,” he said, flicking at an overgrown hanging leaf with the tip of his wand as they walked past. At his touch, the leaf shrank and blinked into invisibility, along with the entire vine to which it was attached. “But this was my favourite part of the whole garden. Everyone’s interested in the plants that kill.”

“Neville would love this place,” Hermione said, gazing all about her with a look in her eyes that he associated with grand plans. “He’s talked of re-landscaping the Hogwarts grounds.”

Draco only just held back the grimace when Longbottom’s name came up. “What’s he doing now, besides only having plants for friends?”

She cast him a quelling sideways glance that he returned with a beatific smile. In response, she only shook her head slightly as if his incorrigibility were irreparable. “No, he’s the Professor of Herbology at Hogwarts. Thus his interest in re-landscaping.”

“Ah.” Draco could faintly recall his name having come up in the agenda at the Governors’ meetings now. 

There was a meaningful way in the way she didn’t look at him and instead looked up at the light filtering through the carefully cultivated arched trellis walkway. He didn’t respond to her gesture and hid a smile when she predictably cleared her throat and said, “_ You _ could vote to approve his request, I’m sure.”

“Surely that’s up to the Headmistress?” Draco said, all innocence.

She tilted her head and evaluated the profusion of greenery on the other side of the mesh walls. “I think Professor McGonagall is far more circumspect than Professor Dumbledore was. She wouldn’t circumvent the Board if they were against the idea.” She then blinked and put a hand on his arm. “Oh! Or have Neville bring students here on a guided tour!”

He was taken aback by her enthusiasm and, as always, the touch of her hand. A glance down saw a golden, bared forearm and slim fingers clutching at the fabric of his sleeve. 

His fixed attention made her start. She pulled her hand away and lifted her other hand to cover up her forearm in a gesture of self-conscious embarrassment that made him frown. “I forgot to glamour it today,” she said with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

“Pardon?” he asked, confused.

With a small uncomfortable shrug, she withdrew her hand, and he saw a faint silverish mark on the inside of her forearm, halfway between her wrist and elbow. 

She noticed his fixed attention on her arm, and she twitched for a moment before she gave a short laugh, rotating her wrist so that he could see. _ Mudblood. _The unevenly scrawled word sent a dash of cold down the back of his neck, and he was about to demand just who had done this to her when the realisation crashed into him.

“It’s ugly,” she said when he didn’t speak, and she lifted her wand to hover over the disfigurement. 

He grabbed the tip with his hand and firmly closed his fingers around the wood, uncertain what she planned to do. His eyes flew up to meet hers. “What’s this?” he asked. 

Even before she responded, he realised the answer_. _

He was horrified, yet he shouldn’t have been. He’d been there, been physically present in that moment when he had turned his back on being someone’s hero and instead chose to pretend he was a stone wall instead. He hadn’t seen what had happened then, behind his back—he didn't want to know what all the screaming meant. If he concentrated, he had thought at the time, then everything was just business as usual. Just another victim tortured for information, for fun. It wasn't anyone he _ knew. _ It was none of his business.

Now that moment seemed even more rife with pain and anguish, and more than just a little regret at his own cowardice.

There was a hard knot in his throat, and he vaguely felt like crying. The word blurred slightly before his eyes. He’d seen her bare arm a score of times and never seen this scar. The thought made him feel slightly ashamed.

Hermione’s head was tilted down, but he caught a glimpse of her profile and saw when her lips pulled into a wry grimace. “Bellatrix’s work. I always took pride in the insult, you know? But it’s different when it’s scrawled on your body in this way. It’s so superficial but sometimes I wish she had—better penmanship or something.” That was when she looked up and laughed. The kind of laugh where you laughed at yourself because it was better than someone else laughing at you.

The word was hastily and sloppily etched. Draco had a vague memory of Bellatrix’s poisoned goblin dagger, which she carried with her night and day, strapped at her waist. At certain times, she would take it out and absently run a fingernail along the blade, liking that high-pitched scraping sound that it made. Only the tip had been poisoned, and she had delighted in creating that jarring noise that always made Greyback growl threateningly.

Hermione hadn’t been the only victim of Bellatrix’s dagger, and Draco had comforted himself with that thought back when she’d meant nothing more than profound regret and helpless pity to him. She’d certainly been a lot better off than the man who’d lost an eye to the blade.

He brushed the side of his thumb gently over the scar, the memories flowing over him like a torrent. She’d lied to Bellatrix while enduring this. “It’s not ugly.” Far from it. Her scar was the opposite of what his Mark meant. His had meant caving to expectations and pressure, but hers had been sustained under agonising torment. He felt almost reverent as he stood there, his head bent over hers, gazing down at her slim forearm, so slight that he was surprised Bellatrix hadn’t broken it just on a whim. “Never that. You received yours under the utmost duress known to man. You should flaunt it, like a badge of honour.” 

He wondered if it would be too forward of him to press a kiss to her wound. Perhaps so. He’d been _ so good _ recently. No suggestive comments, no heated looks. Respect. That was what he was showing her, by treating her as someone who was an equal. 

No. Someone superior to him, even.

He let go of her wand and released her arm.

She seemed to pause for a moment before she stashed away her wand, leaving her forearm untouched. Still she didn't move to put distance between them. “And yours?” she asked.

He looked away. His scoff was derisive, but it was aimed at himself. “Not the same at all. Mine was received as the result of years of dedicated brainwashing.”

“Do you truly believe that? Really?”

“How else do you get an entire populace to believe in the inferiority and evilness of another?”

Any other time, she would have responded with a sharp comment as to how convenient that excuse was. But something had changed between them; gradually, infinitesimally, through the slowly fading days of summer. Today, she said bracingly, “It’s all in the past, Draco. Anyway, this is much too somber a topic for the Poison Garden. They’d end up finding our bones strewn around the Crying Yew.” She pulled down the sleeve of her robe and looked around. “Where is that anyway? I’m almost positive that’s the reason we’re so melancholy.”

The Crying Yew was a tree that had the tendency to let you relive your worst regrets in life, in a cathartic way that, like all cathartic habits, eventually became an addiction one couldn’t break. Why were Purebloods like this? Why did they prefer to brood alone in silence rather than draw life and energy from _ doing _ something, even if that something had to be as crazily active as heading a hundred different charitable organisations? Aloud, all Draco said was, “Being around that tree was most probably the reason my mother gave up living.”

“Did she spend a lot of time around it?” 

Draco shrugged. “Perhaps. I wasn't here a lot." That, in fact, was one of _ his _ regrets. If he'd been around, would his mother have pulled together the shambles of her erstwhile life, a path so far from what she'd always envisioned? He'd never know now. Back then, getting away was the only way he could continue to live with himself. He hadn't understood his mother's need to dwell on the past, to scrutinise every bit of what had occurred, discuss all the moments that had gone wrong and theorise what could have been done differently. "She wanted to talk about everything, and I just wanted to forget it all.” He slid his hands into his pockets and grimaced up at the shimmering vines above. “She probably spent more time than was healthy in here. The Poison Garden was part of her dowry—her reward for having a male child in a sanctioned marriage.”

The Poison Garden used to belong on the Black Estate; a famous collection of rare and exotic plants to which many longed to have access. Upon Draco’s one hundredth day of life, it’d been magically carved out and gifted to Narcissa Malfoy to be grafted onto the Malfoy Gardens.

To distract himself from the gloomy turn of conversation, he turned away from her and continued walking through the arcade on his own, the light falling around him in a patterned mosaic on the pebbled ground. After a moment, he heard a light pattering of feet behind him as she caught up with him.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t lose yourself in here,” she said, lightly relegating some of the world’s most poisonous plants to a walk in the park. “Who’d show me around if you were gone?”

She was trying to cheer him up, and perhaps she was right to look around uneasily because he was starting to feel unusually morose. “Do you understand, Granger?” he asked, almost angry at himself, at his past. “If Voldemort hadn’t lost, if I came across you in the streets, I’d have had to kill you, do you know that?" The thought gave him chills. He never thought that he’d actually be thankful that Bellatrix had been the one to question her. That Bellatrix’s crazed and inconsistent ways had the unintended consequence of someone having to step in to stop her.

Had it been Draco there to question Hermione, his reluctant manner would have solicited taunts to simply end her life.

He felt cold all over at the thought.

Hermione stopped beside him. When he glanced at her, she was laughing. “You're underestimating me. I might have killed _ you _ first."

His eyes tracked every infinitesimal movement of her face. “Would you really?” He wondered just how far her competitiveness went.

“Oh, without hesitation.” She elbowed him suddenly. "You were seriously the biggest prat in school."

He caught her elbow and held her in place. “Then you’ll be glad to know that this garden was put to good use after the war. I made Burgmansia tea with fresh blossoms and the seedlings. Almost took off my own leg with the pruning shears in the haze afterwards, or that’s what the elves told me.” 

It worked to distract her. Hermione shot him a horrified stare. “Burg_ mansia _? That’s—completely demented! It could have—you could have killed yourself in the most gruesome manner and laughed the entire time while doing it. Do you know, there was an actual case of someone who did that? Oh, Draco, I really wish you’d stop with the imbibing of really suspect potions.” She seemed to hear herself then, the way she sounded like she was lecturing him, because she stopped short and made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “I mean, none of us have the right to judge anyone else. I know that now, you know. I don’t think any of us realised what you went through. What the war did.” She shrugged and looked down, and he could have sworn she blushed. “I just prefer you like this, that's all. Sober.” Her eyes were fixed on her hands as she flexed them around her wand. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve all had to deal with demons in our own ways.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to admit to her all the ways she had inadvertently changed his life. The way she’d made him see things from a different perspective. She’d always been so right, so smug, so secure in the conviction that everything she did was endlessly _ right _ that he’d not seen that she was searching for something as well, something that was hard to put into words.

He’d had no more need of potions because he had _ her presence _ to look forward to. 

That wasn’t exactly the sort of talk conducive to a friendly, respectful walk in the gardens, however, which was what she undoubtedly wanted. She opened up to him because he kept his distance. 

He kept to that unspoken barrier because he didn’t want to lose this—whatever this was. It was strange to want someone beyond the physical. He didn’t even quite understand what exactly he wanted from her. Surely not friendship. That wasn’t something he regularly bemoaned or felt the lack therefrom.

They had emerged from the tunnel and blinked at the sunlight. There was a reason for the Lustration Tunnel leading into the Poison Garden. The trellis walkway was covered with vined vegetation of varying sorts; plants designed to clear your head, plants that made you think twice before venturing unwary into deathly dangerous territory.

“Here’s where we should don Bubblehead Charms,” he said, taking his wand out. 

After a moment, she followed suit. Up went the charm, and her features swam under the layers of film that filtered her expressions. It felt like putting on clothes after a sacred baptism ritual. There was a sense of purpose in him that slowly solidified as he looked at her, with her chin tilted up to absorb the last rays of the summer sun. Something in him felt vaguely like a small, dry flower bud slowly unfurling in her presence, opening itself to the brightness of her personality—

The voice cut through the silence like an announcement over the loudspeaker. Someone was speaking using an Amplification Charm. 

“Are you expecting someone?” she asked, before shifting away slightly. 

He felt her drawing away in more than a physical sense. “No, but…” he trailed off as he cocked his head to the side to listen. The voice was clearly Blaise’s.

“—Strap up, Pudder! Have I got the thing for you. No more of this sex fighting business with old school chums. I’ve given you a fortnight, and memory indicates that’s more than enough time for you to bore of old games. It’s on to newer pastures and different women—”

That was when Blaise’s amplified voice trailed off and he appeared several metres away from them on the steps around the fountain. Even across the distance, Draco could see that he was surprised to see them. Blaise’s mouth was visibly open through the filter of a Bubble masking charm that only covered the lower half of his face. It only snapped abruptly shut as he almost stumbled down the next step. It would have been a comical sight seeing Blaise so far from his usual debonair demeanour, only Draco was hoping—very much _ praying _—that the woman behind him hadn’t heard any of what he’d said, or read anything into it if she had.

“Granger,” Blaise then said in a normal voice. Draco had never seen his friend blush before; his olive-toned skin didn’t usually show signs of unsightly pigmentation. All the same, he could tell Blaise was nonplussed. “Well, isn’t this one for the books?” he said much too brightly, flashing his dimples. 

There was no sound from Hermione, and Draco risked a look back at her to find her frozen in place. He couldn’t tell how much she had heard and understood, given Blaise’s ability to completely run on by himself. He thought though that there was something intent in her expression, that familiar flickering of her eyes that occurred when she was thinking.

The only thing that scared him about this woman was when she _ overdid _ the thinking. She wasn’t doing that now, was she? She didn’t seem— _ upset _ at Blaise’s interruption. It was more as though she had been caught off guard by the mention of other women and other proclivities, perhaps? Draco hoped that wasn’t it. He had gone to considerable lengths to make her think that he lived a generally blameless life, aside from his dietary failings. Everyone knew he had enough ticks on the disciplinary chart against him to begin with.

In any event, a change of subject wouldn’t go amiss. “What did you call me?” Draco asked.

Unfortunately, Blaise’s response wasn’t the segue Draco had been hoping for.

“Pudder,” Blaise said, and his instant reply showed Draco exactly how discomfited he was by Hermione’s presence. He slowly ambled forward with something of his old insouciance. “Apparently, it’s the new term for Purebloods. Rather prosaic and _ completely _ lacking in originality, but I gather they were trying to work off what _ Mudblood _ is to Muggleborns, which...”

Again Blaise trailed off. Draco didn’t have to say a word. His flat-lidded expression must have said it for him. Blaise cleared his throat, and the Bubble mask billowed out around his nose and mouth. “Apologies for that, Granger. No intent to insult, I assure you.”

“None taken,” she said, the line of her lips unusually tight. 

A quick glance at her showed that she looked just as uncomfortable with the situation as he did. Instead of the light-hearted expression he was coming to expect on her face when they talked, she looked formal and wary, and it wasn’t just because of how uncomfortable the Bubblehead could be after a prolonged duration. Draco stepped in front of her. “I invited Hermione to tour the gardens. She’s quite knowledgeable about the poisonous varieties.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me,” Blaise said, and Draco let out a slow breath of relief. That ended when Blaise said with forced bonhomie, “Although I’m surprised the Malfoy Gardens allow you within ten feet of it. I’m certain it’s tied into the cornerstone of this place that only _ hallowed feet may trod herewith _, and all that.” He flashed a grin at Draco, who returned it with a stony-face expression and wished his friend were within striking distance.

“I’ve changed the wards on the estate,” Draco said pointedly, trying not to glare too overtly at his friend. “Obviously. Otherwise _ your _ feet might be the first to go up in flames.”

Blaise seemed completely immune to the tension in the air, casually running the sole of his foot over the top of a particularly sentient species of plants whose leaves turned into blades from his hovering motion. “So, Granger, I saw that you accompanied our little Pudder to the Wizengamot’s Remembrance ‘do. That’ll set the grindy among the merfolk, eh?”

“Well, we went as friends,” Hermione said, her even tone indicating that she found Blaise no more amusing than Draco did at that moment. 

Blaise raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Draco in a way that he was sure Hermione didn't miss. “Friends, is it? No one’s friends with this twit.”

“Maybe you should go,” Draco began, giving Blaise a hard look.

“I really should—” Hermione cut in. 

Draco grasped hold of her bag to forestall her. “Not you. You haven’t finished telling me about the Angel’s Trumpets.” To Blaise, he said, “She knows the most fascinating tales about plants. If Professor Sprout had told us more of such stories, Herbology would have been infinitely more interesting.”

“I’ll owl you the book,” she said and flashed a sideways glance at him. If there was something slightly tense and inquiring in her eyes, Draco blamed it on Blaise’s untimely arrival and his litany of badly worded conversation starters.

Draco quirked his lips in what was meant to be a reassuring smile at Hermione. She didn’t respond. “Just bring it to that meeting. Where I’m supposed to stand up and smile all around as they applaud me, remember?”

That got a reluctant twitch of her lips before she shook her head and looked in the direction of the house. “Yes—wait, no, I’ll be out of the country this entire week.”

Blaise had wandered off into another part of the gardens. Draco’s hand kept a grip on her bag as she pulled away from him, holding the strap as it slid down her shoulder. “Then, better yet, bring it over.” He offered a small smile to soften his demand.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, tugging harder at her bag when he didn’t let go of it immediately. She seemed to decide to compromise. “I’ll _ owl _.” 

She didn’t look at him before she turned on her heel and Disapparated. Draco stood in the spot that she had just vacated for a moment, frowning in thought. Had she been acting just a little oddly? Had Blaise ruined everything with his thoughtless announcement cast over the Malfoy grounds for all and sundry to hear? But his fuckwittery aside, there hadn’t been any other reason for her to act oddly and Disapparate, right?

Draco sucked in his lips and raised his voice. “Blaise!”

The quickness with which Blaise popped his head around a shrub indicated that he hadn’t been out of hearing distance. “You called?”

Draco marched forward. “You are the biggest fucking _ twat _. Couldn’t you have made yourself scarce when you saw her here?”

Blaise raised his eyebrows as though Draco was the one who was the simpleton. “It’s _ daylight _ . You were talking about _ plants _ and books, for God’s sake. I thought I was hanging around to save you. Is she a tartar or something? Makes you learn before you get any rumpy-pumpy? I really wouldn’t put it past her. She looks like she’d give you a bloody test before—”

“Shut up,” Draco said, about to rub his temples with his hand before realising that he was still encased in a bubble. “Why in the world don’t I have more friends?”

“No one can stand you,” Blaise said, grinning widely. “Lucky for you, I’m impervious to insults. I gave this, whatever this—” he gestured expansively with both hands in a manner that could have meant anything from Draco standing in the West Gardens at Malfoy Manor to Hermione flying in the sky using a complicated form of Levitation “—is, two weeks. _ I’ve _ called off the wedding, so if even _ I _can’t commit, I felt certain that you’re sick of her already. Come on, admit it. She’s a prosy bore, isn’t she? Outside of the bedroom, that is.”

Draco heaved a sigh. “It’s really none of your business what’s between me and Hermione.”

“That’s another thing—are you calling her by her first name now? It’s very—quaint.” Blaise's expression indicated he thought the exact opposite of what he’d just said.

“I’m going to send her an owl,” Draco said, turning away.

Behind him, Blaise raised his voice in complaint. “What about lunch? I thought you’d at least feed your only friend in the world!”

* * *

“I really don’t understand,” Blaise continued during lunch in the conservatory. “Are you or are you not shagging her?”

Draco didn’t speak for a long time. He refolded the napkin on his lap before scrunching it up in one fist and returning it to the table next to his plate. “I’m—working on it, alright?” he muttered.

Blaise’s incredulous expression made Draco feel two inches tall. “Still?” He leaned forward. “How has this not yet happened? You were going regularly to sex fights with her—”

“I never once said that Hermione Granger went to sex fights,” Draco cut in.

Blaise continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “And you’re seeing each other so regularly that even the Prophet saw fit to mention it. Something like how you were Hermione Granger’s newest project, given her affinity for wealthy, prominent men of varying degrees of infamy.” He paused for effect. “I’m talking about Viktor Krum and Harry Potter. But also that Scandinavian politician whose name slips my mind.”

Draco held tightly to his glass of lemonade before taking a sip, holding the tart liquid tightly between clenched teeth.

“Instead of taking her to fantastic destinations to sweep her off her feet and into your bed, you’re here, at the Manor?” Blaise shook his head. “It’s like you’re…” In the middle of speaking, his expression changed, and his eyes sharpened. He sat forward so suddenly the legs of his chair thudded down in a complete breach of dining etiquette. “Fuck. Are you trying to shag her or _ court _her?”

“Nobody said _ anything _about a courtship.” Draco aimed a hard look at Blaise before letting his eyes fall away to the greenery around the room.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Blaise said, gesturing with one hand as though to say that he’d known Draco long enough to know the difference between what he said and didn’t. “You _ are _ courting her. Are you serious?”

“Why should that be so strange? Is it so difficult to believe that she could be—_ fond _ of me?”

“No, not difficult to believe she’d gradually become attached to you—or your money.” Blaise shook his head. “I was referring to _ your _ inclination, as a matter of fact. She’s not exactly someone you’d have chosen for yourself. It goes against the grain for people like us to be with…” Blaise trailed off, and raised two hands in the air before sighing and dropping his shoulders. “There’s really no good way to put it without sounding like the most prejudiced git in the world—"

Draco's voice held a warning edge. "Then don't."

"She’s just not like us. I imagine there would be landmines, cultural differences. _ Spending _ differences, even. I dated a Halfblood once, and even that was rather strange. She had all manner of odd ideas from her father, and she wanted the children to grow up in the Muggle world first before going to school.” Blaise laughed as though it were a joke to him.

“If I _ were _ courting her—and I’ve not said that I am—that is _ my _personal business and no one else’s,” Draco said, his eyes like chipped ice. “But I thank you for your concern in my affairs.” He pushed away from the table and stood. A second after he had turned away from Blaise, he Disapparated, only to reappear in the Receiving Hall of the Manor itself. 

There was a muttered curse just before he disappeared from the conservatory, and a loud crack later, Blaise was right there behind him. “You’re _ courting _ her,” Blaise said. “You’re fixing up your house. Showing her around the gardens; you’ve even had the House Elves clean it up first. Admit it. These are Pureblood customs that you’re adhering to.” 

Draco stopped in his headlong path towards the library. He turned and faced Blaise, whose expression, instead of the scorn he had expected to see, was one of sympathy. “Frankly, I’ve no idea what I want with her. Only that I do want her. In any capacity she’ll allow me."

Since that day in the Manor when he had taken her hand, he’d begun to think that whatever this was, it wasn’t just a simple passing fancy. It was something deeper, something akin to an obsession that took you in its grip and didn't let go until the novelty had worn off.

He _ wanted _ her, undoubtedly. He liked her—at times, despite the moments when she could be so combative that it was almost impossible to get a normal word out of her. But more than that? He was afraid to admit it to himself, but there were times when the thought of not seeing her smile at him sent an indefinable ache curling up his spine.

Was that enough for a courtship? 

Why not?

He hadn’t bothered to ask himself more than that. Since the end of the war, he hadn’t met a single woman who had drawn him in as much as she had, and that was enough for him. They understood each other; understood the pains and the regrets from having survived the same war. Couldn’t that be enough of a basis for a good marriage? On top of that, he desired her, and that was more than he had ever hoped from a potential marriage back in the days when his parents had been alive.

Blaise shrugged and dropped his gaze before Draco’s challenging expression. “Have you—talked to her about it? Does she know?”

“She should. We’ve been—seeing each other. Regularly.”

“She wasn’t brought up with our customs, Draco. How would she know?”

Draco didn’t speak for a few moments. “Do you disapprove, Blaise? Is this why you’re here? If so, then you can f—”

He was cut off with a wave of Blaise’s hand. “Why would I disapprove of anything you do? Have I ever disapproved of your choices in life? Did I say a word when you sealed yourself off and turned yourself over to the Dark Lord? Or when you went on a self-destructive path to kill yourself by any liquid means possible? Have I said a word?”

When Draco didn’t respond, Blaise shrugged. “It’s not in me to interfere, but after what I’ve gone through…” Blaise heaved a sigh. “Granger’s the last woman you should be involved with. She’s not just a Muggleborn; she’s _ the _ poster girl for the Muggleborns. You'd have to make every concession to be with her, and you're the last person to compromise—on anything. This could wreck you.”

These were all the things he didn’t want to hear. He was somehow dimly aware of just how wrecked he would be if Hermione rejected him, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t spend so much time with him if she hadn’t developed feelings for him. She’d wanted him too—those little moments in which she’d leaned further into him or voluntarily touched him—God, even their brief sparring in the ring, he’d had ample proof from her body alone that she wasn’t immune to him. 

He’d held himself back because he’d wanted to show her that she wasn’t just another fuck to him.

But had that all been a tactical mistake? He’d no idea. All he knew was how, with her, for the first time in a very long time, he was starting to feel human again. He hadn’t wanted to talk about any part of the war with anyone, not even when his mother had cried and begged him to. He’d left the room and gotten dead drunk instead.

It simply couldn’t be one-sided, not this connection that he had with her.

“You should hear the things they say behind her back. She’s vindictive—” Blaise pointed a forefinger as though a specific memory had just occurred to him. “Remember that Ravenclaw she cursed in school? If this went badly, she could have the social leeway to _ force you out of England. _” Blaise shook his head. “It’s not fair what they’re doing to us, when all we’ve ever done was be born to the legacy, but there it is. That’s the way of the world now.”

Somehow that didn’t sound completely right either, but he wasn’t listening to Blaise anymore. What had _ Blaise _ done other than exist? Draco hadn’t just existed; he’d contributed to crimes against society. “She has plans for the future and—I can help her.” He was speaking so softly that it was an utterance almost to himself. He _ did _ have something to offer her, even if Blaise didn’t think so. 

“I’ve no doubt that she’s done wonders for you,” Blaise said, his lips twisting. He sighed and gazed at a particularly large oil painting hanging in the hall. He gestured at the painting, and for the first time Draco noticed that the scene in it had a herd of deer grazing near a forest. Before, the painting had always been characterised by its realistic depiction of hunting, complete with blood and gore. “I was just walking through the Manor, and it’s—different. Less empty or void of life. Not that your mother wasn't a mistress of the manor _ par excellence. _ It’s just that it’s a novel experience walking through here and not having a portrait or twenty tell me of the people I should _ crucio _.”

Draco let out a short laugh.

“I’ll be the first to admit it: times have changed. They _ are _ changing. I suppose it’s not too far-fetched that we should move with them.” There was a slightly wistful tone in Blaise’s voice as he spoke. “I’ve been told that I’m too old-fashioned. Thus, a Pudder. Can you believe it?”

With a gesture of his head, Draco indicated that they should move to the library. The two of them walked across the marble hall and through the double doors that opened up into the Malfoy Library. 

“That doesn’t really matter to you, does it? You’re marrying a Pudder yourself.” Draco’s back was turned to the room as he cast a spell to open the entire wall of windows with his wand.

“You haven’t been attending to me.” Blaise was waiting with slightly elevated eyebrows when Draco turned around, as though he’d caught out his friend by that slip of tongue. His lips were tight despite the grin he flashed at Draco. “Ester’s returning to Turkey. We called it off.”

Draco wasn’t surprised in the least, given the short duration of all of Blaise’s relationships. Still, when they had had supper at Blaise’s weeks ago, Blaise and Ester had canoodled enough to make any third party feel nauseous. 

“Language barrier, perhaps?” Blaise was his friend, despite his many mesalliances, so Draco moved towards the drinks cabinet to show friendly consolation.

Blaise lifted a finger to gesture his usual, and Draco began to pour the _ passito _ that Blaise preferred as a digestif. “She’s so perfect in so many ways that I suppose there was bound to be a let-down somewhere. She just doesn’t understand the draw of the sex fighting. She’s—rather subservient in the bedroom.”

He paused in the middle of pouring to turn to stare at Blaise. “Dear God. You’re complaining because the woman you’ve been raving about for the past few months doesn’t wish to fight you in the bedroom? Have you gone insane?”

Ensconced in an armchair with a knee crossed over the other, Blaise clasped his fingers together in front of him and gazed darkly at a corner in the room. “It—adds a little spice. If you fancied a spitfire and she didn’t want to fight you, it’s like she’s not even interested in you. I thought she was already rather forward-thinking when she accepted my advances, but I suppose I was too optimistic.” 

Blaise was _ the most optimistic _chap Draco knew, but he supposed that also had to do with the detached and generally unflappable overlook Blaise held with everything. It was distinctly odd seeing his insouciant friend be so overset by a woman that Draco didn’t perceive as anything out of the common way. “Onto the next one then,” Draco said, lifting his glass in toast. 

“That’s easy enough for you to say.” Blaise turned his fulminating gaze on Draco. “From what I’ve heard, Muggleborn women are just not like us.” He glared at Draco under his brows as though he considered Draco the damnably lucky one in all this. “They’re not as invested in long-term commitment. It’s all fun and games with them.” He shrugged. “And why not? With their lifespan and their dreary lives, they should take all the pleasure they can out of living.” He rose and drained his glass in one swallow before carrying it over to Draco. “I applaud you, I really do, for considering her for courtship. Perhaps finding a Muggleborn is the right way to go about it. Though I imagine you’d just have to be bloody inventive in bed to keep them...”

That was exactly the problem. He wanted to keep her forever. Until Blaise had come to speak to him, he had been keeping his obsession at a very manageable level. One day at a time, even though the hours passed by extra slowly when she wasn’t around. Every minute of the day, his thoughts went to her, and he sent her Owls regularly throughout the day. Most of the time, he managed to keep it professional—there had been many, many inquiries about her charities when all he wanted was a reply scrawled with her handwriting and directed to him. _ Draco _written in her hand was perhaps the most beautiful word in the English language. 

_ I want to be with you forever, _would be even better.

He would have accepted a simple _ I like you _, but even that admission had not been forthcoming.

Perhaps he hadn’t even wanted to admit it to himself, much less aloud to Blaise, but he wanted all of Hermione Granger’s attention on him and him alone. He thought if he could manage to make all her causes a tangible possibility and not just a distant one due to lack of funds, she’d depend on him. If he could fill up all her available time, then that would be the next step to worming himself further into her life. 

Right. So he _ had _ been lying to himself. He would never have been satisfied with a cold and proper marriage with Hermione Granger. It was all or nothing. 

“You wouldn’t even have to court her to have a relationship with her,” Blaise was saying. “Aren’t you the lucky one?” His sour expression poked fun at the sad state of his emotional affairs.

For someone who sailed through life as though things were one giant joke, Blaise could sometimes be counted on to say the most truthful adages at the strangest times. 

Happiness _ was _ within Draco’s grasp. There was no need for the formal and ritualistic courtship that Purebloods endured, with the standard distances kept between one another at thirty centimetres for the first two months. He could blow through all of that with an enormous gesture—new headquarters for milady’s charitable functions, perhaps? The sky was the limit. The Devil’s Pele had nothing on ancient watchtowers next to hidden coves with sandy beaches. He actually knew of just the place that would do for her, actually.

“You’re right,” Draco said. He straightened and buttoned up the front of his outer robes. “What am I doing here with you when I should be out winning the hand of a Muggleborn woman?” He clapped Blaise on the back twice and grinned when all he received was a grimace in response. “Wish me luck.”

If he heard nothing but a grunt, Draco chose to ignore it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is late by a week, but it is due to three people who helped me with it so much that it's partially theirs. Lunamionny, my final draft reviewer and Britpicker; Disenchantedglow, who helped me with this from the beginning and spents so much time talking about it with me; and last but most importantly, Kahcicamera, who stayed up nights helping me tie up loose threads and unraveling issues with character arcs and glaring plot holes, and helped review everything up until the time I posted. Thank you all so much for making this fic much less trashy than it really is.
> 
> I kept fixing little things up until posting, so any mistakes are mine.
> 
> There are approximately six chapters left, four of which are mainly written. The next update will be in three weeks, unless I spend an inordinate amount of time rewriting. Thanks for your patience and, as always, your thoughts, reviews, and lovely, lovely comments.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco overhears things he's not supposed to.

Draco was grinning like a fool when he Apparated to Hermione’s flat a scant two hours later. In his hands, he held the deeds to the aforementioned stretch of secluded beach, including a series of interconnected coves and inlets. There was a watchtower there that the Nameholder could refurbish with a little bit of magic and was large enough to be set up as an office. The property had a naturally warded geography—water did most of the work for you, especially salt water. With its choice of saltwater coves, freshwater inlets, limestone caves, beaches, and a cliff with plenty of rocky hills, Draco fancied that it was versatile enough that Hermione could host an entire coalition of sentient magical species.

It was his equivalent of going to her with a bouquet of flowers in hand, which he understood was the usual method of importuning by Muggles. Ancient magical jewellery was more in keeping with Pureblood practices, but Draco thought that Hermione might just prefer a more practical gift. He really ought to arrange a more formal affair for all this, but keeping it casual, so to speak, seemed like an excellent opening. _ See what I’ve found in the family deeds, _he’d say. Oh, and wouldn’t we make a formidable team together?

He paused outside her door and smoothed down his robes. Immediately, he felt a bit silly. She wouldn't be around. She hadn’t stayed to eat with him at the Manor; she'd be somewhere else getting a bit of lunch.

But there were voices coming from inside her place. Her flat was on the second floor and overlooked the street corner at the very front of Diagonal Alley, with its front facing the Muggle world, and the side of it squarely inside the wizarding boundaries. In every way, it was middle of the road and mundane. It straddled the two worlds like the ancient Colossus standing at the port of Rhodes. 

As an older building, it had the usual Notice-Me-Not charms on the Muggle side, which in an earlier era meant that voice-cancelling spells were unnecessary from that side as wizards did not usually approach from the Muggle entrance. Just last week, however, Hermione had opened up her wards to allow him access so they could communicate more readily about her unending list of charitable works. 

Pausing on the threshold, instinct made him stop to listen. It took only another moment’s hesitation to do what came natural to him when he heard the low murmur of a conversation. He cast an Amplifying Charm on the door, effectively turning it into a speaker, all the time hoping the occupants were so engrossed they wouldn't notice it, as the spell tended to create an echo. Another wave of his wand, and he was instantly glamoured to appear as part of the doorway fixture.

There was a vague voice at the back of his mind that warned him to stop and simply knock on the door. Nothing good ever came out of eavesdropping. 

He was two seconds from knocking when he realised there was a man in there with Hermione, and it was Ronald Weasley. 

"So, what'd you think of the restaurant? Good, wasn’t it?” Weasley’s voice. Something hesitant and also eager in his tone.

Draco was reminded of Weasley’s proprietary air towards Hermione at the Ministry, and his brows drew together into an irritated frown. 

“It was alright. Honestly, I don’t know why Harry keeps on calling these lunches and then not showing up. It’s really not like him.”

Weasley’s laugh. “Well, he probably just wants to give us some time to ourselves. Ever the matchmaker, is Harry.”

“_Harry? _ Oh, I don’t think so—wait, really?”

Draco couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Could Weasley be any more obvious without stating his intentions? If only Weasley would just confess his feelings and be rejected and out of the way. Rejected, Draco had no doubt that Weasley would take himself off to sulk for at least a year. Instead, he hung around like a funk from expired potions, lurking around as though he were an offended older brother there to guard Hermione's virtue. Everyone except Hermione could see through Weasley. Potter _ was _ probably in on the entire thing.

“Well, he’s worried about you, as I am.” Weasley’s voice had gone soft. “You’re—hanging out with Malfoy so much, and he’s got just about the worst reputation a man could have." He was pleading now, and his coaxing tone made Draco's skin itch. "Look, don’t roll your eyes. I’m not talking about the Ceremony or about the past. I’m talking about things he’s into _ now _. And aren’t you the one who’s always going on about a bloke doing a bit of good for society?”

There was an impatient sigh. “I don’t want to get into this today, Ron. I’m just not in the mood. Malfoy _ is _ doing good for society. I’ve told you about all the money he’s donated—”

Something warm glowed inside Draco’s chest at being defended by Hermione.

“That’s just ‘cause he wants to get into your knickers!"

There was an audible slap—that of a magazine slamming against a counter or—Draco hoped—Hermione's hand on Weasley's cheek.

"Alright, I’m sorry for being so crude, ‘Mione, but I’ve _ seen _ the way he looks at you and it’s just—”

“What, how does he look at me?” Hermione sounded huffy. Draco imagined she had her arms crossed over her chest now. She hadn't slapped him then, much to Draco's disappointment.

Weasley’s voice grew more heated and defensive. “All you’re going to say is that I’m imagining things. All because of that _ one sodding time _ that year. I’ve apologised for that already, yeah, and I’m not about to keep apologising for things that don’t need apologies!”

“For your information, we’re not like that,” she was saying in a voice edged with ice. “You’re wrong. That’s not his purpose at all.” 

Good for you, Draco thought outside the door. The tension in his neck eased. He didn’t even know why he was so worried. It wasn’t _ jealousy _, since no Malfoy since the dawn of time had ever had to worry about a rival in love. Despite the heat between Hermione and Weasley, they had never been able to sit down and hold a calm conversation for longer than fifteen minutes. One could almost set a clock by them.

Predictably, Weasley took the opportunity to smear Draco’s name. “Well, perhaps he’s just too prejudiced to act on his feelings, then. You know how he’s always hated Muggles. You can’t just erase that sort of a past.” There might have been a response to that, but Draco couldn’t make it out. Whatever it was, Weasley’s voice rose in a heated reaction. “I know what I see. Bloody hell! You’re blind if you don’t see what Malfoy’s up to. You’re not his type at all! You’re inexperienced and a lamb ripe for the plucking. Fact is, you’ve no idea what he’s even thinking—”

Hermione cut into Weasley’s diatribe. “You always—_ always _ underestimate me, Ronald. For _ your information_, I know who Malfoy is. You’re not telling me anything new. And I’m _ perfectly _well aware of what I’m doing with Malfoy, and I can handle myself—” 

Draco lifted his wand again, the tip a bare a centimetre from the door, when he heard Weasley say, “Yeah? Like you’ve been _ handling _ him? By hanging onto him and making a bloody fool of yourself?”

“I have not—Ron!” There were more sounds of things shifted around, and Hermione’s voice was jumping all over the place as though she were agitatedly moving about inside.

Draco’s hand lifted. That bastard was upsetting her. Whatever was between Hermione and him was none of Weasley’s business, and Draco was seconds away from striding in and hexing Weasley right across his freckly face.

“D’you even know what he’s been up to these past few years?”

Draco paused in the act of dismantling the charm on the door.

Weasley spoke so fast his words tumbled out in a rush. “He’s got a record. He was caught at that Squib prostitution ring that was shut down. They’d been feeding the Squib women potions to keep them compliant. He had the same potions in his system when he was caught, d’you know that? Oh, it was kept quiet and the files sealed because he’s on the board of the European Wizarding Alliance, and a few of the higher-ranking members came forward to say that he hadn’t been there at the time—but his wand signature was on the registry.”

Draco tensed, his breath bated as he waited for Hermione to respond. She didn’t say a word before Weasley said it for her.

“You’re brilliant, but you’re completely blind when it comes to people. You _ know _ what kind of reputation he has. He could have lost it. He’s got crazy on both sides of his family. His mother’s side _ and _ his father’s side. They say Lucius Malfoy lost it at the end… Malfoy’s just using you. Littering money around to get something from you. You're so naïve you’ve no idea at all what people are like and what they want.”

“Like you do? Like you know what I want? Just _ shut up _ , Ron! You don’t know _ anything _ . You just assume these things about me and what do you care about my charities? I’ll tell you something—_Malfoy _ has been coming to my meetings.” The end of her sentence was far too high in pitch. There was an edge of uncertainty in her tone that made Draco hesitate.

“Of _ course _ he has. He’s got money to burn, hasn’t he?" 

“He's offering his monetary help, and I'm taking it. Is that being misled? I'm the one winning here. He can pay for it. He already has been. And he’s good for it, too. I'm the one using him here, Ron, are you happy now? I'm using him, and nobody's losing anything. He’s nothing to me, do you understand? We have a business deal. That’s all there is.”

Draco waited for Hermione to disagree with Weasley, but silence held reign inside of Hermione’s flat. He’d always understood the power of cutting words from an early age, but he’d always been the wielder of that particular weapon. Never before had it struck him so hard that he felt almost breathless with its impact. _ He’s nothing to me. _

_ Nothing. _

_ He was nothing to her. _

They were just words, surely.

And yet…

Draco found his heart lodged in his throat. Just words, he thought to himself. They didn't mean anything.

Weasley at least seemed momentarily struck. “So you're just using him? Well—I mean he has Galleons to burn but—are you just going to whore yourself out because he’s got the money?”

“_Whoring _ myself out.” Hermione’s voice was cold. “Is that—So that’s what you think of me? That I’d do something like that?”

“No, no,” Ron’s voice had gone hushed and placating, like they were standing very close to one another. “You know I’d never think that of you, ‘Mione. It’s just that everyone knows what these Death Eaters are like. Blimey, didja hear of the stuff they go up to during the war? They raped people, Hermione. They _ killed. _ Fred—” He choked on the word and broke off, sounding het-up and ready to burst. “If he hadn’t let them all into the school, there wouldn’t even have been that many casualties.”

“I’m sorry, Ron,” Hermione said, and Draco’s heart seized up at how soft her voice had gone, all the vitriol drained out of it. If her words before had been edged with anger and sarcasm, now she sounded sad and resigned. He wanted to burst through the door and—

And what? He couldn’t change Hermione’s mind if she didn’t want to believe in him in the first place. 

“I know exactly what I’m doing, Ron,” Hermione said in a low voice. She sounded weary. "Nobody's being fooled here.” She broke off, and Draco pressed up against the door to hear better. Was she crying? But no, the next sound he heard was a bitter sort of laugh, the kind directed at oneself. “He’s a Death Eater and a Slytherin. I know. I remember. I promise I won’t forget that."

His own breath sounded short and shallow in his ears. In that moment, if his feet hadn't been frozen to the ground, he might have considered storming in and punching in a few throats or walls. He gazed down at his hand that was pressed against the door, and his fingers gave an infinitesimal tremor that seemed completely disconnected to his body, as though it were coming from very far away. 

They didn’t look like they belonged to Draco Malfoy. He always landed on his feet. He didn’t stand outside a door and tremble like a drowned cat.

Weasley continued talking. “I just don’t want you to be hurt. You mean the world to me, you know that?” 

Draco stood there and waited. He waited for Hermione to say that she’d found something about him that was appealing, that they were friends, that he wasn't just a walking, talking sack of gold. He waited for her to mitigate her comments, for an explanation for why she’d just claimed that he was untrustworthy and a good-for-nothing.

He waited for her to tell Weasley to get out, that Draco's and her friendship meant something too. He waited for her to do something to indicate that she had a preference for him over Weasley, something that could give him hope after the blow that had come moments before.

Above all, he waited outside the door, waiting for the woman he fancied to turn away her one-time lover, the heaviness of his stomach churning with the certainty that Weasley still had romantic inclinations towards her and planned on telling her _ now _.

Weasley’s voice continued to overlap Hermione’s until both faded away into another room.

Draco waited until the sounds within the flat grew quiet, and still she had said nothing. She hadn't said anything he'd wanted to hear.

* * *

Hermione hadn’t been wrong.

Draco had donated very generously to every single cause she had mentioned over the last month. He had been, in fact, opening a separate vault at Gringotts for the purpose. At a rough estimate, he had open-handedly signed over more than four hundred and fifty thousand Galleons in this last month alone.

Even though he had trusted her, he had gotten a receipt for every single knut of that money. He had an account book annotated for every bit of that charity and knew exactly which causes received what. The Malfoy name—or more specifically, Draco’s name—was listed on everything. Originally he had intended to stay a silent donor, but she had negated that idea and made him the honorary member of many of her charitable associations. It gave both of them credibility, she had said, and he hadn’t argued with her.

It had seemed aboveboard at the time. He’d been completely certain that she wouldn’t pocket a single Galleon of that money.

He had never envisioned that his money and his pocketbook were the means to an end. 

Even if she hadn’t taken his money for personal gain, she had still conned him.

Oh, not in any way that really mattered. It was still only money, after all, and Draco had long since come to the realisation that he would probably die alone and unmourned.

Only, in that past month, he had started to believe that they had a genuine connection. He thought that when she put him off that she was looking for something real, too. Something genuine. So he had slowed his advances and in retrospect, he had become just like Ronald Weasley, that poor slob. He had friendzoned himself, handing over Galleon after Galleon, thinking of how lovely she’d be as the matriarch of the Malfoy Manor, heading any charities that she wished.

He could kick himself for his own naivety. He _ wanted _ to kick himself. He wanted to throttle _ her. _

Why would she want to be matriarch of Malfoy Manor when she didn’t think well of him in the first place? He’d begun to think that maybe, just maybe...

But no. Weasley had said that he was slime and prejudiced and possibly insane, and she hadn’t argued with him, hadn’t tried to persuade her _ friend _ of Draco’s better attributes. She had said so many lovely things to Draco when they’d been alone, and now Draco realised that that was the crux of it all—they’d been alone. There had been no audience. No one to see the best friend of Harry Potter, the hero, the Muggleborn crusader on the side of good and right, cosying up to a Death Eater. No one to bear witness to her befriending someone whose only praiseworthy acts in the past few years had been drunkenly tossing money to charities as if it were water into a bottomless fountain. 

No one to see that she’d been using him.

She could have said anything and he would have acquiesced to her pretty pleas.

Oh, she had played her cards right, alright. She had acted coy and dangled herself in front of him. If she had refused him, then he would have—

—In all possibility, he probably would have pursued her harder. 

Draco laughed aloud, a bitter sound that echoed off the walls of the empty manor.

He’d been fooling himself the entire time. While he had been smelling of April and May, she’d been calculating all the ways that befriending him could benefit her. She was, by her own admission, Slytherin to the core.

She’d wanted him to stop hassling her. She had told him so, on multiple occasions. She’d wanted him to stop encroaching on her territory so much that she’d been willing to give him a _ carte blanche _favour to help him in his time of need. Possibly she’d been desperate when she’d come up with it. 

Then he imagined she reexamined her own priorities and decided to use his proximity and his blatant desire for her to work to her advantage. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. If she couldn’t get the bird to stop pecking at her, she could make it go where she wanted.

Draco wanted to yell and rant and throw a bloody fit.

He didn’t, though. The days when he had done that aloud and in public were over. He had been a naive little boy when he had done so in the past, confident in his father’s ability to fix all his problems for him, arrogant with the status of his name, smug with the knowledge that the power of money and prestige could solve everything.

Two of those things no longer existed, even if Hermione had been oh-so-eager to help relieve him of his account balance to redeem the formerly pristine reputation of his name. 

He had fooled himself. She was no blushing ingenue, after all.

It had all been strictly business. Mercenary to the last.

_ I know exactly who Malfoy is_, she had said.

Right after Weasley had called him a litany of things that made something deep within Draco’s chest curdle with shame. _ Prejudiced. Hates Muggles. Good for nothing but money. _

_ Galleons to burn. _

His teeth were clenched so hard that his neck felt the strain. It felt the same as the first days after his parents were dead and he was the only one left of the Malfoys. He’d had no one to accompany him on his trips in public. Pride demanded he made these forays alone and not resort to taking a house-elf along with him. He’d wanted to; he really had.

He’d been met with disdain and derision, except from shopkeepers. “Well, his money’s still good, isn’t it?” Draco had heard Madame Malkin say defensively as he was leaving. There had been no comments as to how he’d been only a boy, or how his family had always graced that establishment, how they were good, loyal customers.

Nothing. Just—_he was still good for the money. _

Even if she thought _ he personally _ was no good for anything else.

His heart was pounding fit to deafen him, and the fists he clenched at his sides were so cold that his fingers were mildly trembling. The shock of what he’d overheard had completely knocked him off balance, and he was almost light-headed with the aftereffects. There were no other rational explanations rushing to help him out, no logical motives for any of this—_ she had completely led him on. _

Inside his head, an angry refrain began to resound beneath the thread of despair: _ That bitch. The absolute bitch. _

* * *

It would have been exceedingly petty of him to withdraw his funding when he had all but promised it to her when he’d showed up at her pitiful associations. 

Pettiness was a distant worry when he felt capable of casting several hundred _ Unforgivables. _

The next day, an owl arrived early in the morning over breakfast. All around him had been tempting dishes that the house elves had created since he’d begun a normal life instead of sleeping until two in the afternoon. He hadn’t eaten a bite and had taken himself into the Malfoy library instead. The parchment fluttering down from the owl’s talons bore the unmistakable scrawl of Hermione’s hand, and he set it on fire as soon as it was released into the air. The owl screeched in protest at the flames that flared up around its feet and flapped silently away as fast as it could, not even stopping for a treat first.

Every single owl that came went the way of the first.

Blaise Flooed into the Manor that week and watched him in training for half an hour. When Draco managed to fend off a series of quick feints and attacks from his trainer, ending with his staff end right under his opponent’s jaw, Blaise clapped. The slow series of clapping echoed in the Long Gallery, and Draco and his trainer glanced in his direction.

Draco dropped his staff down to starting position. His trainer and he bowed to each other before the former silently left the court, leaving Blaise alone with Draco.

Silently, without acknowledging Blaise, Draco began to unlace his leather gloves. The exercise should have abated some of his anger at least, but these days his rage was an ever-ready emotion, bubbling up so near the surface that he wanted to scream with the impotency of it all.

“You’ve improved,” Blaise said, seemingly oblivious to his silent fury. “Or you’ve been screwing _ him _ instead.”

Usually Blaise could be counted on to cheer him up, but every single word out of his friend’s mouth grated on him. Draco set his jaw. “I'm not in the mood for your jokes."

Blaise glanced around the court. If Draco had been in a better state of mind, he would have instantly ordered Blaise to spit out whatever he had on his mind, but he didn’t even trust himself to say that much. Blaise knew the place well enough that he didn’t have to feign interest in the interior design. 

The sparring sessions with his trainer were beginning to lose their effect on Draco. If anything, his unquenched outrage had simmered at a higher and higher heat as the days passed by in an identical blur.

For his pride, he had thought, he would simply ignore her. Pretend as though he had lost interest. That would show her up more than any overt shows of wrath and indignation.

That thought had buoyed him for the first few days whenever her owl came flying through the window.

It wasn’t enough anymore.

He wanted _ satisfaction. _

“You’re living here permanently now,” Blaise said, his hands clasped behind his back. His heels made heavy thuds against the floorboards.

Draco didn’t respond, lost in a bubble of resentment that threatened to pop. His lips were clamped down in a tight white line, and he tried to jerk off his glove with an impatient hiss before taking out his wand and casting a Vanishing spell on it. All the while, he was aware of Blaise silently watching him.

“...Draco.”

That was what he should have done to Hermione Granger when she was in his house. He should have tied her up and Vanished her clothing away and _ used _ her, just as she had used him. Used him and made a fucking fool out of him.

“Draco.”

He still could, goddammit. She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know that he was onto her now. She didn’t know that he had overheard her conversation and now knew exactly where he stood with her—at the bottom of a barrel.

This was the week she was supposed to have gone off on an interview to the Island of Skye. She was due back on Sunday, and wouldn’t it be such a shame for her to Apparate here and find herself a prisoner?

_ I’m good for something else besides money, Granger. I’ll show you, shan’t I? _

“Draco!” 

Blaise’s hand was on Draco’s arm, and for a moment Draco’s wand lifted automatically, ready to blast his friend off his feet, before he snapped back to himself.

Blaise stared at him with wide, wary eyes. “What the fuck is the matter with you? I’ve owled you and firecalled you multiple times, and you’ve not responded. Pepper at your flat said you’ve been here, mostly. She looked very sad about it.” He gestured at the either side of his head in what Draco assumed indicated the house-elf’s ears. "Droopy ears and all that.” He paused for a moment.

Draco didn’t speak, busying himself with uncapping a glass bottle of sparkling cider. He could feel Blaise’s eyes on him and wished, not for the first time in his life, that his friend didn’t make it his goal to treat him like a brother.

He didn’t have anyone that he needed and could trust, and that was how he bloody liked it.

The next words out of Blaise’s mouth surprised him. “You’re fucking shit at being a friend, Malfoy, d’you know that?”

Draco’s head shot up and met Blaise’s thin-lipped expression. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yeah. You are. You’re a complete shit, Malfoy. I told you that Ester and I had broken up, and do you try to cheer me up? No, you’ve holed yourself up in your pitiful mansion and gone to ground. Just like every other time when something doesn’t go your way. You’re a fucking spoiled pissant—”

It was just the opening that Draco had been looking for for days; simmering alone with no target in sight. The next second, he was standing toe to toe with Blaise, his chin jerked up in challenge as he spoke in a deceptively soft voice. “What did you just call me?”

Blaise didn’t move an inch, and a muscle twitched in his cheek as he stared Draco down. “I _ called _ you a bloody _ pissant._ Are you hard of hearing, you inbred ingrate?”

“Inbred?” Draco didn’t seem capable of doing more than repeat words. A startled laugh was choked out of him. “And you think you’re the poster child for mixed blood?”

“Look at you. You’re so pale you might as well be see-through.”

Draco’s lips tightened over his teeth before he shook his head, turning away. “Oh, shut the fuck up, Zabini. Do you even know what you’re saying anymore?”

“I suppose Hermione Granger found out just how—”

Draco’s head snapped up, his hands tightening into fists at his side. He almost forgot he was holding his wand and nearly snapped it in half. “Shut _ up _.”

“—prejudiced you really are and—”

That word careened Draco over the edge. His fist came up and popped Blaise across the face in a sharp blow.

Blaise fell backwards, hands clasped to his face. “—OW! _ Fuck. FUCK! _Draco, what did we say about hitting the face!” He turned away and began to gingerly touch his face all over.

Draco narrowed his eyes unsympathetically at his friend. “You’re fine. I didn't strike you that hard. Stop being a bloody ponce about everything.”

“Bloody _ fuck, _ Malfoy. You’d better hope that’s not going to leave a trace, or I’m coming for your hair.”

That surprised a short chuff of laughter from Draco; the sharp, tight anger in his chest eased. He shook his head slightly and swiped the sweat on the side of his temple with the back of his still gloved hand. “I didn’t realise you were that disconsolate over Ester’s departure. Weren’t you the one who still wanted to have sex with other women?”

Blaise bared his teeth behind the hand still touching his nose. “Yes, thank you, Draco. I fucked up. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

For once, Draco managed to not put his foot in his mouth. He searched for something acceptable to suggest. “Ask her to give you another chance.” Even the suggestion felt strange on his tongue. Draco wasn’t a big believer in second chances. His entire disaster of a life now was predicated on his father’s granting of a second chance to an egomaniac of a Dark wizard.

Blaise snorted, and Draco waited. Perhaps the suggestion was too antithetical to Blaise’s projection of an insouciant man-about-town. “I did. She refused. She had a few choice words about how all Pureblood wizards were all the same. _ Pudder _, she called me. That's where I got that phrase.” Blaise laughed, but it sounded mirthless and a little bitter. 

Draco couldn’t help but agree. The name simply wasn’t meant to be elegant.

"_Puds. _ God, it’s awful. Makes us sound like a sack of potatoes.” Blaise shuddered as though he couldn’t help himself.

Draco paused in pulling off his other glove. “It’s rather unimaginative, isn’t it?”

“Quite.”

They fell silent, and Blaise continued to tentatively feel his face. “You’ve got an entire meadow of flowers on your arm,” he said finally. “Has that been there before? Did that happen in your cups?”

It was a semi-jokey question, meant to mend the rift between them. Draco gazed down at his left arm, where Hermione’s simple charm had caused a single lily to blossom in two-dimensional black linework, somehow beautiful in its simplicity and lack of colour, its lines somehow looking like calligraphy in certain angles. He hadn’t known her charm could do that—that the flower would continue to grow and propagate until his entire left arm was inked in the delicate feathery strokes all the way up so that his deltoid was covered. When he went to bed at night, when before all he’d had was the creepy form of his Dark Mark, now he’d begun tracing the flower, tracking its growth on his skin. If he held his arm very closely up to his nose, he thought he could even smell the faintest hint of the flower’s perfume, of the earthiness of plants and dew and life.

Last night in the bath, he’d wanted to blast it off his arm in a fit of pique but somehow couldn’t bring himself to do it.

For whatever reason, it'd ceased its growth and was no longer winding its way up his arm like a comforting vine. Which was somehow strangely appropriate, given that its creator was no longer around to give it life.

“What’s happened with Granger?” Blaise asked when he didn’t speak.

Draco willed his features into an expressionless mask. “Went back to Weasley.” 

Blaise screwed up his face as though he were disgusted with the notion. “I hope you gave her hell for that.” Draco didn’t speak and after a moment, Blaise peered curiously at him. “That’s oddly unlike you.”

“I’m taking the high road.” The words felt like ash in his mouth.

“There’s no such thing as the high road in _ affaires de coeur_,” Blaise replied darkly. “If I saw Ester with someone else, a _ pud_, as she so dismissively called me, I’d rip his face off.”

The image of Weasley’s face ripped off was a satisfying one, and Draco let it replay a few times in his mind. 

“Although I doubt _ she’s _ with anyone,” Blaise said. “Or at least it’s not going well.”

Draco had been in the process of toweling off his face and chest. He looked up at that. “Oh?” Against his better judgement, hope was lifting its head from the darkness and peering out.

“Otherwise she’d have said something,” Blaise said. He chewed his lip and sighed. “Got anything to drink around here?”

Draco’s hand twitched with the desire to pump Blaise for information. “In the library.” 

“Right,” Blaise said, and Disapparated.

Draco looked around the room and tossed the remaining glove towards the benches on the side before turning on his heel.

In the library, Blaise was already in the process of pouring out a sizeable measure of brandy. “Anything for you?”

“What do you mean, you doubt she’s with anyone?” Draco asked, yanking on the shirt that he had pulled from his wardrobe on the way to the library.

With his hand suspended over the rim of the glass, Blaise paused before drinking. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? If Ester found someone else, she’d want me to know about it.” Blaise drank a hearty gulp before he winced through his teeth. “And then I would kill him.”

“Ester,” Draco repeated, and he let out the breath he’d been holding. "You were talking about Ester." His chest felt uncomfortably tight.

Blaise glanced sideways at him before he proceeded to pour out another measure of brandy into a second glass, sloshing it onto the tray before he shrugged and picked it up to hold out to Draco. “Ah, did you think I meant Granger?”

Draco’s hand was held out for the drink and at the sound of the name, he nearly crushed the glass in his hand. 

  
“Her as well, I’d imagine,” Blaise said. “If she were with Weasley, she wouldn’t be still showing up at the ring, looking more frustrated than satiated.”

The glass made a loud clatter when Draco set it down on the desk nearest them, the liquid splashing liberally onto the table. A chasm had opened up beneath his feet, and his jaw felt stiff. “She's been going?" Something had ceased to work in his internal organs and his chest felt as though it were pounding hard enough to explode. 

Blaise shrugged. “I’d assume so. Yesterday, I believe. There’s a new roster. Why else would she be there, if not for the purpose of participating? She's not exactly the voyeur type. Of course, I didn’t stay and chat, but…” He gave another shrug, lackadaisically, as though he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Draco turned away to gaze out the long windows at the gardens where he had spent so much time with her. She wanted to see everything, know about everything. She was insatiable, and he’d wanted to hand the world as he knew it to her. That despicable jade.

Even now, thoughts of her dallying with other men still had the ability to make him see red.

Behind him, Blaise spoke up. “I hope you at least got a tumble or two before you two called it quits.”

Really, who did she think she was? She’d rejected _ him _, who was considered quite a skilled lover, in order to playact in the ring.

“Please tell me you did.”

The more Draco thought about it, the angrier he became. He didn’t need to wait for her to pop in to see him. He could beard the fucking lion in her den, and this time, he’d probably win as well.

“I’ve got to go,” Draco said to Blaise. “Dinner sometime, on me.”

He didn’t bother waiting for a response before he Apparated up to his room. With the aid of a few handy spells, he was dressed and gone from the Manor in less than five minutes.

His thoughts were so loud in his ears that they pounded to the refrain of his pulsing heart beat. 

He could _ ruin _ her. 

Purity may not conquer all in this day and age, but a Malfoy still had a bloody good chance at ending up on top.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to kahcicamera, disenchantedglow, and lunamionny for all their work and input. Thank you so much!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Draco's angry and makes Hermione angry. Now they're both foaming at the mouth.

If Draco had bothered to read the many owls from Hermione, he might have had more pertinent information about her schedule. Unfortunately, he’d been so incensed that he’d incinerated them all on sight. She’d been gone for a week for work, slated to return to England on Thursday. Despite all her many owls to him, her first port of call after she returned was the sex fighting club, which went to show just how highly he was placed in her list of priorities.

Every bloody thing was racking up to show to him just what an utter fool he had been.

The very last person who’d made a fool of him and utterly terrified him had been a creepy Halfblood with the face of a snake; finally dead and gone after ruining the end of his formative years. He would be staked through the heart before he let Hermione Granger leave a mark on him like that again, only for her to simply walk away as though it had all been nothing.

He was running high on anger and bitterness when he dropped by the ring on Friday to check up on her whereabouts. If he had to, he’d bribe the whole lot of them to let him stand in for the poor sucker she was up against.

Surprisingly, she wasn’t there.

Gwyneth was, though. 

It took a surprisingly long time to wheedle any sort of information from Gwyneth, and the tentative promise of a new arena next year. She gave him a wary look before launching into questions. “What is going on with the two of you? You haven’t come here in ages, you have no bloody interest in the sport, and when you _ are _here, you have a one-track mind. I’m no expert, but this obsession with Medusa is coming off as a bit barmy. If I didn’t know that she could handle herself—”

“Oh, she most assuredly can handle herself,” Draco said with a grim smile. “Haven’t you seen how she's trounced me time and again?”

“I have and all I can say is that maybe you need to belong to another club for that.” Her stern expression clearly indicated that her club wasn’t meant to be used for other sexual foibles. 

Privately, Draco thought the hint of her suspicions of other unsavory inclinations hypocritical, considering what she did as a hobby, but he only flashed her his most angelic smile. It was the one that had never failed to cajole his mother out of her moods, and made him look innocent and boyish. “One last chance for her to pin me isn’t going to cause any trouble.”

Gwyneth’s arms were folded over her chest, and she stared down her thin nose at Draco. “Have you considered she’s avoiding you?”

The smile almost slid off Draco’s face. “Is she?”

“Well, she’s switched her days to Mondays now.”

A part of Draco felt removed from the physical him that was moving and talking and smiling at Gwyneth, as though he hadn’t received any information that had struck him like a blow. This was it, then: the incontrovertible proof that Hermione had been hiding her movements from him, keeping things from him so that she could continue to 

come off smelling sweeter than a rose. 

Before, their bouts had always taken place on Fridays. For the past two months, he’d kept that day full for her, arranging events with enough enticement to keep her agreeable to the change in scheduling. He’d thought…

Like a fool, he’d thought that it meant she wasn’t going to the ring anymore. Certainly it’d been manipulative which, as Blaise had noted, carried with it more than an iota of a double standard. Draco simply hadn’t wanted anyone else to be with Hermione and see any part of her that he privately considered to be _ his. _

Apparently, she’d handily circumvented that. A part of him should be elated that she wasn’t being faithful to Weasley, but it wasn’t—in fact, some small voice despaired at this, that she didn’t plan on being exclusive with any man. That he wasn’t an exception for her like she was for him.

His face didn’t reveal any of this inner turmoil. To Gwyneth, his smile simply deepened. There was a lopsided dimple on one side of his cheek that emerged only when he smiled like that. “I’d give a lot for another round with her,” he said, pitching his voice low and compelling.

It seemed to work with Gwyneth. She heaved a sigh, and he knew the moment that she would capitulate even before she nodded. “Fine. One last chance.”

Draco didn’t give any indication of the triumphant glee that surged within him.

In the past few days, all the possible scenarios had been replayed ad nauseum in his brain. Everything circled around his brain in a loop, until he could picture it: what would happen, what _ could _ happen, what he’d do to make it happen, and the very words she’d bloody say when she got her comeuppance.

Because, _ fuck him sideways and over a barrel _, he wasn’t going to let her pin him again. 

Not with all the training he'd been doing. Not fucking _ ever. _ Monday. Monday would be the night he’d prevail over her. He’d get to hold her down and _ unmask _ her. He’d finally get evidence of the sanctimonious two-faced bitch she really was and reveal it to the world.

Oh, yes. This latest piece of information had decided it for him. She wasn’t just going around behind _ his _ back. Even Weasley, her childhood friend, wasn’t exempt from her two-faced behaviour. In stark contrast to her secretive ways, Blaise had been completely forthright with _ his _ ex-fiancee. Really, Draco would be doing a favour for all mankind fool enough to fall for her upright, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth demeanour. They’d _ all _been fooled, but no longer.

Hermione Granger wasn’t even going to know what hit her. Dropped to the mat, pinned, and unmasked before everyone. What a pity there would be a hidden camera somewhere on the premises of _ his _ property set up to take pictures at his express signal. If it happened to take a high quality and revealing snapshot of the poster girl of prudence and prudery, that was just tit for tat. People in glass houses, et cetera.  
  


Of course, if revealed, questions would be asked and inquiries made into the club. It was altogether too possible that suspicion would land on him, and he’d be kicked out of the club and blacklisted after this. Hopefully Blaise wouldn’t care about that too much. Draco certainly didn't. They could _ have _ the property, for all that he cared, and good luck to them with making full use of the facilities once there was no Magical Nameholder. All he needed was one last showdown in revenge for her making a complete fool out of him. He rather thought he'd earned it.

He was going to enjoy tearing down those sanctimonious walls she had erected around her perfect little life. She’d bemoaned the fact that she had been pigeonholed, but were these supposed preconceptions about her in fact her own fault, given how she’d completely led him on? He was going to savour every single moment of regret and grief he was going to bring down on her head. 

In the past few days, thoughts of retribution and redress had circled around in his head over and over again. Mostly, he understood that it was the anger taking precedence, but that hadn’t stopped him from replaying fantasies of revenge. It would be beautiful. Perfect. Perhaps she would plead with him before he orchestrated the photos to appear in the _ Prophet. _ He could imagine the scene fully, especially when he was in his cups. 

The first imagined scenario would go somewhere along the lines of him keeping her at Malfoy Manor at his beck and call. That fantasy was more overt and probably also unlikely. He didn’t fancy his chances of being able to subdue her around the clock. In the middle of the night, however, that was the idea to which he returned the most.

Strangely for the majority of the time, the scenes he imagined most often weren’t how he actually expected his schemes to play out. They were intimate in a way that surprised even him. Even when he was upset with Hermione, furious with her, _ planning his revenge on her _ , he found himself pining for that deep level of intimacy they’d never achieved in real life. His fantasies somehow didn’t comprise of him pounding into her against the wall, or on tabletops, or any other convenient surface. Usually they consisted of them lying down next to each other and Draco simply smoothing the hair away from her face. She’d look at him with unguarded eyes, the soft look she had sometimes when she regarded him. She would never explain what that look meant, but it seemed to indicate something like _ you’re not as bad as you make yourself out to be. _

It also sometimes felt like: _ I forgive you, Draco, and I understand. I want to be with you, too. _

She had never said those words to him. She probably would never say those words. She had given him hope, let him try his hardest to win her over, and pretended she liked him—to no avail. It had all been a huge joke to her; ha-ha, joke’s on Draco. 

He wasn’t having it.

Whenever this sequence played out in his head, it always ended with her laughing at him, and him closing his eyes and covering his ears and his head, clenching his fists together to prevent himself from striking out at something breakable. He always ended up feeling murderous, the blood pounding in his veins, with the urge to strike out at something. 

To strike out at _ her. _

He wanted to strike her. At times, he wanted to Apparate directly to her flat, to shake her until she was completely breathless, and demand to know what the bloody hell she was playing at. She would have a list of rationale, things ranging from—_ I didn’t know what I was doing; I’m sorry, Draco _ to _ Why wouldn’t I treat you the way you treated me, you complete and utter bastard? _

Sometimes, it was, _ Didn’t you once want me and everyone else like me dead? _

Every time he thought of _ that _ possibility, the bottom of his stomach dropped out and his throat closed up. He had no reasonable explanation to offer her. It would be an exact replay of the situation in that restaurant, which felt so long ago but hung over his head like a bloody rain cloud. _ People don’t forget _ , she’d said. _ People don’t forgive. _

What was forgiveness? he’d responded then with a scoff. He didn’t need it, not from her, not from anyone. All he needed was for the nightmares to go away. There was a reason he stayed out of dark alleys at night, and it wasn’t so much that he didn’t trust in his own defensive spellwork but that the images that danced before his eyes were much worse than any actual physical manifestations of his sins. He’d seen women beg and plead for their lives, and he had closed his eyes and cast a Cruciatus Curse in response. He’d watched as a professor he’d seen, who’d smiled and greeted him if she passed him in the halls even if he hadn’t been one of her students, was hung in mid-air and fed to a giant snake as though she’d been nothing more than an inanimate morsel. He’d held a wand to his Headmaster, with the full intention of killing him, a goal he’d had for an entire school year. The images of the dead and bleeding perpetually danced on the insides of his eyelids so that he’d wanted nothing more than the blessed oblivion that lay at the bottom of a drink—or sometimes, when that wasn’t enough, the stupor that came from more potent concoctions.

The _ very _ bravest thing he’d done in his entire misbegotten time as a Death Eater was to act like a coward, and wasn’t that a sort of irony in itself? 

If the only women who were willing to overlook his past were foreigners or women with their eyes out for a man’s bank vault, then what chance did he have with a Muggleborn woman who’d been chased out of school by a motley crew of homicidal Purebloods? He’d often thought that if he’d just met her _ that little bit later _ in life, he would choose not reveal to her all the dark deeds of his past. They’d be a secret he’d take to the grave with him in order to just keep her.

On top of it all, Hermione Granger was someone surrounded every day by honest labourers of some sort, people who had Third Class Orders of Merlin for services rendered to the nation in times of Great Peril. 

All he had on his wall was his Acquittal of Accused Crimes.

He had been fooling himself, that was clear enough. 

If only he hadn’t been floundering in a dream for so long, he would have woken up a lot sooner. He blamed the proximity to her for that. He wasn’t used to being so intimate with women—not in the way he had been with her, with wholesome conversations and daylight meetings for things that were so pure that he now realised he had been an idiot. He’d treated her as the woman he’d intended to marry. Meanwhile, she was the woman who he’d seen in sex fights, who was made up of such contradictory facets as to make his head spin on a daily basis. Not only was she the woman who spoke of rainbows and butterflies to disadvantaged magical groups; she was also the woman who’d held him at wandpoint and threatened to do terrible things to his favourite organ, and he’d forgotten all of that in his bloody lovesick stupor.

What in the seven hells had he been _ doing? _ It all seemed so foolish and ridiculous to him now. It was just that he’d never expected someone like her to happen to him. He’d never expected that she’d be the one to get under his skin, to crawl under there like an unwanted malady and stay there for eternity. He had been right in only one thing—she was an itch he wanted to scratch, only she had spread like an uncontrollable infection and taken him over, body and soul.

Of _ course _ she only saw him as a great sad sack of Galleons. It was practically the first thing she’d said to him the first time they’d greeted each other in ages. She’d accused him of being a useless person, of not having done anything worthwhile with his legacy. In her cool-eyed, level-headed, heartless manner, she’d decided to do something about it herself—even if she would have to relieve him of his gold one piece at a time.

He almost felt like laughing through his misery; it was so utterly ridiculous and so completely underhanded. 

It was exactly what he would have done in the same situation, were his emotions not involved. That had been where he had gone wrong. He’d become sentimental from the lust. That was all that it was. It was that bloody inconvenient Gryffindor side of him that the Sorting Hat had pointed out, which had nearly given him conniptions before he’d been able to point out his father’s status as a Governor, and hence the ability to silently hex the item to ashes if need be.

“It’s Slytherin just for that,” the Sorting Hat had announced before muttering for his ears alone, “and may you rot there, you little brat.”

So Hermione did not love him and probably never would. He could just as easily cut his losses.

Revenge, after all, was so much sweeter than unrequited love.

Or whatever it was he had felt so briefly for her.

* * *

He arrived at the ring early on Monday, and he sat on one side by himself, a silent, brooding figure that emitted just enough dangerous vibes that most people kept well away from him.

As was common, Medusa Portkeyed in at the very last moment. Since he was waiting for her, he got a chance to see her face when she appeared, and something about her quick, jerky movements made him think that she wasn’t in the best mood. For a moment, he was filled with an insatiable urge to find out what was bothering her, but then he remembered all the grievances he had against her. All the things she’d lied to him about.

His spine stiffened. If something bad had happened to Hermione, she deserved it. She’d probably played someone else for a fool and had been infamously outed.

He surveyed her darkly, barely able to control his ire. Her hair was down, and she wore dark robes that she stripped off quickly to reveal the white bandage swimwear he had seen before. She didn’t look like a woman getting ready to be shagged out of her mind.

There was a distinct sense of deja vu seeing her in that garb. The first time he had gone up against her, she had shown up dressed exactly in that. She’d stood on the side like that, shifting from foot to foot as though she were getting ready to be called to the front of a lecture hall to give a report. He’d seen her in that pose before in multiple scenarios—in front of donors for her endless charities, and back in school before demonstrating a newly learned charm. 

He still marveled at what was clearly a dichotomy in her personality. What was preventing her from going out and fucking the whole lot of wizards who were after her? _ Dick _ had been very obviously keen on her. Yet she chose to hide herself away behind a mask.

His resolve jumped and wavered at the sight of her. Something unfurled in his chest, straining out to reach her. _ Here I am _ , a voice inside him seemed to say. _ Notice me. Want me. Need me. _

_ Love me. _

It took all his resolve to jerk his eyes away from the sight of her and down to his hands. Two of his fingers were bandaged. They’d been patched up directly after being injured during practice, but old habits were hard to break. His mother had always insisted on continuing to carry out the first aid routine weeks after any injuries had been declared healed. “Darling, there’s no reason to risk it,” she would say, brushing away his fidgety fingers and hushing him when he complained. “After all, a bandage or two lets others know you’ve been injured, so that they’re more careful around you.” 

Ever legally savvy, she’d add, “It serves as a notice to others if they want to strike an injured party and be hexed to within an inch of their lives.” None of those reasons had seemed compelling to him; he hadn’t cared about official retaliatory practices at such a young age. 

Narcissa had saved her best argument for last, the one that always managed to convince him: “Wouldn’t you also want the advantage over others—by pretending you’re badly injured when you might not be? Not to mention how dashing it makes you look, as though you’ve gone ten rounds with a dragon. Now, if you didn’t have a bandage, who would know you even had an injury?”

_ Was that why he had them wrapped today? Was it so she would notice and cluck over him? _

_ Or did he have a darker, more sinister motive behind it? _

As focused as Draco was on his fingers, he immediately felt when Hermione’s attention landed on him. He glanced up and met her eyes. There was a slightly stunned quality to the way her movements stilled just before she tilted her head in that inquisitive manner she had. 

He didn’t even need to see her entire face to have an indication of her intentions. Any moment now, she was going to march over to him and bring up the subject of his reappearance here.

Even so, he’d never before wanted so much to unmask her and see her face as he did then. Really _ see _ her while she was here. What was her true expression while she was wrestling? What was she really thinking? _ What did she need from this place that he wasn't giving her? _

Of course, he’d get his opportunity to see her when he exposed her. He couldn’t help that there were cameras rigged up on his property, could he? Naturally not.

What would she look like then? Angry? Hurt? Disappointed? 

Unsurprised?

He and Medusa came within speaking distance in front of the ring. He tried to ignore her state of undress. He hadn’t seen her with so few clothes in so long. He had forgotten just how much she could affect him like this, to the point that his mind could completely forget everything except the amount of skin she showed. Up close, she looked both wild and dainty, the perfect mixture of woman and siren. A score of honey-tinted skin taunted him, and her slim limbs beckoned for him to catch her around the waist and toss her over his shoulder.

_ Take her and Apparate away now. _

He set his jaw and gazed resolutely away from her.

“Well,” she said, with a wary note that somehow made him think she wasn’t entirely happy to see him. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” She sounded slightly peeved about it. 

It simultaneously pleased and enraged him. 

The entire time they’d been playing house with one another—or as close to it as he’d ever got with a woman—she’d been playing a double game. The fact that she was unhappy with him because she’d been found out sent a vicious sort of satisfaction rippling through him.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” he said, irony heavy in his voice. 

His tone didn’t go unnoticed by her. Her eyes drifted down his half-naked body, before returning to his masked face. There were no marks on him at all due to disillusionment charmwork—nothing of his history showed; not his Dark Mark, not his scars, and not the flowers she’d cast on him that he still hadn’t erased.

There was a question in her eyes as she surveyed him. “Have you been coming to the ring all this time then? I’d thought you’d lost interest in this. I almost wasn’t...” she trailed off instead of finishing and then straightened. “You haven’t responded to a single one of my owls.”

Draco stared at her for a full minute in silence, letting her accusation sink in. _ She _ was upset with _ him _ for not responding to owls? She had to be joking.

Instead of reacting, he chose to take her comments at face value. “I’ve been busy.” He shrugged as carelessly as if she’d asked him whether he preferred chips or mushy peas with his fish. As though he’d simply lost interest in both altogether and had gone on the search for something better. 

“I haven’t been able to Floo you at the Manor either,” she said, clearly still on a single-minded track with her cross-examination. 

Draco was in full dodging mode. “Busy with other...hobbies.” He put just enough pause in his response to make it clear what other activities he might have been involved in.

She blinked a full three times at that before she slowly nodded. “Well, right. I mean, I don’t expect you to always dance attendance to me. I assumed that’s why you hadn’t replied to my questions about the Semi-Sentient Species Society. The Quad-S. That you’ve been busy with—well, with other things.” There was a question in her eyes.

He wanted to embrace her. He wanted to strike her. His world had fallen down around him, and she was still questioning him on her charities. 

She always, _ always _ thought she could outsmart him. It had driven him mad in school more times than he could count. He'd felt a tinge of begrudging admiration for her brains in their first year before she’d managed to so thoroughly embarrass him in front of his teammates in their second year; something inside him still curdled when he thought about that moment. It had set the tone for their relationship thereafter—he’d honestly hated her so much that year that he wanted her dead. Every time he’d answer a question in class afterwards only to hear her voice popping up to correct him with that swottily accented “ _ actually,” _ something inside him had wanted to scream.

“How do you think they’re doing it?” Goyle had asked in sixth year when they were all part of the Inquisitorial Squad. “How d’you think they’re managing to get everyone together from different parts of the castle?”

The answer suddenly seemed to him so simple that Draco could have smacked himself on the forehead for not seeing it earlier. “They’re contacting one another.”

“Yeah, but how?” Crabbe asked around a mouthful of semi-digested food.

Draco had gazed upon his friend with disgust. “Say it; don’t spray it.”

“It’s gotta be Granger,” Goyle had said, and Draco hadn’t replied at something that was so obvious. Of course it was Granger. 

It was always her. He’d taken up silently stalking her then, watching her carefully during class and even the moments in between. Most of the time, she was busily writing, her quill flying across the parchment with a speed that made him scoff with annoyance. She spent an inordinate amount of time in the library, springing up from her table to rush into the stacks without any regard for whoever happened to be in her way. More than once she would’ve bumped into him, had he not stopped her with a coldly uttered word of disdain. 

She’d never turned a hair at his insults. Once or twice, she rolled her eyes, and he counted that as a victory. Another time, she made a face at him and said, “Nice try, Malfoy,” and he felt a shiver of awareness at her cheek. He particularly liked to brush past her, close enough to knock off the top book of the stack in her hands, relishing the fact that she’d not grown very much in the preceding years.

He’d thought her so exceptionally unfeminine that every now and again he would wonder what kind of man—or woman—got her rocks off. He’d known she stayed sometimes behind to speak with Professor Snape about Potions and wondered if old and dour was her type. It would have explained her lack of response to him.

Perhaps she did have a type, and that type was simply _ not him _. 

Standing here with her now, he felt the burning sensation of being misused swirl up his spine, and he cracked his neck in reaction. “That’s right. Things to do, women to fuck.” He gave her a grim smile.

She was taken aback by his words. Something flickered across her face and for a moment she looked uncertain and hesitant. “Al...right.” The word was drawn out and her brows furrowed. “Are you—cross at me about something?” she asked almost tentatively.

He continued to stare at her in his dead-eyed way. “Why would I be? Do I have reason to be?”

“Well—honestly? No, you don’t.” Her tone was hardening even as she spoke, and her hands found their way to her hips. Her spine seemed to stiffen in a challenging response to his attitude. “But if you want to confess something, then just say it.”

“_ Confess _something?” he repeated, his ire leaping. “Are you fucking serious? If anyone needs to confess something, I think that’d be you, darling.”

Her lips formed a small ‘O’ before her teeth snapped closed with a click, and her chin jutted out. She tossed her hair over her shoulders in that annoyed way she had, like she was brushing off an unwanted insect. Back in the days at school, that action of hers had always been accompanied by a little scoff that seemed to indicate she thought of him as a pest. “I don’t have _ anything _ on _ my _ conscience, Draco. And if you’re angry with me, then it’s probably exactly what you deserve.”

That startled an angry laugh out of him, and his hand curled into a fist at his side. “Oh, you’ve got to be _ fucking _ joking.”

“READY! FIRST ON THE SCHEDULE, DRACULA AND MEDUSA FOR A REMATCH!”

Without looking at one other, they both ducked under the ropes to enter the ring. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she had whipped apart the ropes with her hand in a small show of temper. He smiled grimly to himself. _ She _ was angry with _ him? _

_ What the ever-loving _ fuck _ was this? _

There was a tie to her top that he hadn't noticed before. His mind flashed to an image of her tied up and unable to run away. 

She ducked her head and lowered her voice, speaking to him under the cover of the rules and announcements ringing out above them. “So the reason I couldn’t get hold of you is because you’ve been here, then?” she said, before being cut off by Gwyneth’s amplified speech.

“Did you hope to see me here?” he said without answering her question. He flashed her a feral grin that made her pause and look at him as though she were frowning. 

Her gaze dipped further down his body, and he felt her scrutiny as if she had made physical contact. He immediately twitched in response. “Then, you haven’t had any...issues?”

He almost choked on his breath before he regained equanimity and leaned forward to say in a soft voice, “Darling, if you’re asking if I’m up for winning, then I can assure you that I have absolutely no problems performing in public.”

She blinked at that, and he could almost see the thoughts whirling around in her head. She looked puzzled, the way she looked whenever she was speculating on obscure trains of thought. “Then…” she hesitated. Despite her presence on the mat, her hands were lowered and she hadn’t crouched down to the starting position. 

There was something else there too, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It felt like he was being set up for something, and yet he had no idea what it was.

Maybe that was how she’d been these past few weeks, and he’d been blind to it all.

His shoulders felt uncommonly tight, and his neck was tense. “Then what’s the problem?” He circled around her slowly. She turned in place and kept him in her sights. “You can’t be bothered by _ my _ being here. _ You're _not seeing anyone romantically, are you? Otherwise, why the need for extracurricular activities of this nature?”

When he glanced at her, he expected her to be in the midst of forming paragraphs about why she didn’t want him here anymore, cramping her style. She shook her head instead, the lines of her head and neck spelling out confusion. He wondered if he’d imagined the calculating expression on her face a moment before. “I just—I didn’t think you’d want to do this here,” she said.

She continued to retreat from him, staying just out of reach. “Not to mention that this would be—well, it’d be a bit awkward, wouldn’t it?” There was something about the purposeful way she looked at a point over his shoulder that made him think that the flush on her cheeks wasn’t just in anticipation of the sporting event alone. 

“Why?” He reached out a hand towards her, testing her guard, and she slapped it away. “Because I’m not Weasley?”

She paused in her step, her head tilted. He had surprised her. “Weasley? What does this have to do with Weas—Ron?”

He advanced into her space so that she was forced to move backwards. He was glad to see that she faltered ever so slightly in the face of his aggression. “I’d imagine that you wouldn’t want him to know you’ve been cheating on him here and there.” Bile rose within him at the thought of _ Ron _ mattering to her, when he himself did not. He was so suddenly incensed that he sneered at her and lunged.

She darted away. “Cheating on him? Wait. I meant that it’d be awkward _ for you. _ Are you sure you want your failure to be on display like this? Here? With me?” Her eyes flashed over the crowd before coming back to rest on him. She ended on a little laugh, like it was clear who would be the winner here.

It was like a red flag fluttering in front of a raging bull, like a gauntlet being thrown down. _ Imagine that, _ he thought. _ She took the words right out of my mouth. _

"Oh, I think I really am. And there’s not going to be a failure. Not from me." 

He pressed forward so that he was less than a metre away from her. He couldn't quite tell at that moment just why she seemed flustered; whether she was unsettled by the proximity of his bare upper body or whether something else was at play.

_ Are you sure you want your failure to be on display like this? _ She was _ constantly _ looking down on him, and at that point, he could have cheerfully throttled her in front of thirty witnesses.

She was getting defensive over a simple question about Ronald Weasley, when she couldn’t even rouse herself to defend _ Draco _ against that fucking pillock. 

No, she not only _ hadn’t _defended him; she’d fucking pilloried him.

She was even making fun of him now, here, after she’d all but invited him to rejoin the fighting.

The realisation made him so angry that he almost reached out and gripped her by the shoulders and shook her—

But he didn't.

He clenched his own fist instead. Only one fist was curled up, by the grace of God and all the years of cultivating self-control. He forced himself to relax it, one centimetre at a time as she stared at him from under the mask—chin tilted up in challenge and no smile evident on her lips.

“Just tell me,” she said quietly. “You broke the pact, didn’t you?” Again, her eyes drifted down his body in a meaningful way and returned to his face; her expression was otherwise impassive but he felt a coldness somehow emanating from her. 

Draco almost spit out his response. “What fucking pact?” Cold. How _ dare _ she be cold to him, when for days and weeks, she’d been gazing at him with those damnable limpid eyes, speaking to him in that soft yielding manner, touching him on his arm in that intimate way—all giving rise to hopes and feelings that were never meant to be returned? _ How dared she? _

How dare she stand here now, about to rip into him for character attacks on her _ bestie _ and one-time sickening infatuation? Because of course they had all known how much she’d fancied the redhead. She’d been so unbelievably obvious back in the days of Hogwarts; the way she’d flounce off whenever Weasley showed up in any room with his girlfriend attached at the hip. Her jealousy had been palpable at fifty paces.

Not that he’d ever felt inclined to take the piss out of her for it. Somehow it had never been funny to him. Not that.

“And what does any of this have to do with Ron?” she asked.

“Nothing at all,” he said now, not moving even a centimetre away. The ruins could have burst into flames around them, and he wouldn’t have noticed or given a shit. “Although I do wonder what he’d say if he knew about your proclivities.”

The moment Draco said that, everything became clear to him. He didn’t just want to expose her activities here just out of a need to hurt where he’d been hurt. There was that too, of course, but there was something else churning deep inside him in the darkest depths of his mind, something that he hadn’t wanted to identify.

_ If she were debased and ostracised in society, she’d have nowhere else to turn but to him. _

_ She’d have to accept him then. The two depraved creatures as they were. _

It was so incredibly galling to have to realise that, even in his most unscrupulous and manipulative ways, he was still searching for a way to keep her all to himself. So frustrating that he completely missed the way her chin jutted out and her nose flared in an obvious show of temper.

“He’s not going to know anything. Since we still have a deal. Right?” Her tone was, once again, pointed in a way that he didn’t understand. Her hands were on her hips, and there was an overt challenge to her stance. There was something he was missing from this conversation, something that was churning under the simple lines they were exchanging verbally. She shook out her hair then, and his mind blanked for a moment on thoughts of vengeance and satisfaction.

His hand lifted to touch her cheek, to brush against the small exposed patch of skin on her face that marked her as who she was. Her eyes flickered at his movement. At the last moment before his fingers made contact, she jerked away out of reach. Her lips formed into an involuntary curl of disgust.

He dropped his hand. His heart thudded at her evasion. “I don’t deal with Mudbloods,” he said with a tight grin, glad of the mask covering up half of his face, hiding his expressions and his clenched jaw. "Just pretend we don’t even know each other, Medusa.” 

If there was a harshness underlying his words, he was fairly sure he was the only one who heard it. _ He _ certainly didn’t know who the bloody hell she was. She stared at him with eyes so dark and implacable that if he didn’t know better, he’d think she was the one who was hurt by all this. That she was the one who had the right to a grudge against him. 

She looked at him like he had murdered that ugly excuse for a cat she’d had and was tearing flesh from its carcass with his teeth. She looked at him as though she didn’t know who he was, like she were moments away from leaving to burn his effigy. 

That just wouldn’t do at all.

“Won't be hard, will it?” he continued with a shrug that was just this side of insolence. “After all, you always win. But of course, if you’re afraid you’ll lose…”

"Not a _ fucking _chance in hell." Her immediate response was almost a snarl, but he’d known she wouldn’t be able to refuse a straight-up challenge like that one. She made a sound, somewhere between a disbelieving scoff and a huff. Her head was tilted back in the way he had come to associate with how she reacted to a challenge, and her eyes had narrowed as though evaluating him as an easy mark.

That was when he knew he had her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, great big thanks to kahcicamera, disenchantedglow, and lunamionny for their endless support and work on this.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The match ends, and the winner is...

“ON YOUR MARKS! SET! GO!”

He’d forgotten how quickly she could move. Almost before Gwyneth had finished talking, Hermione lunged forward on one slim leg to insert herself between his feet. Her head ducked under his right arm, and she was instantly at his side grabbing both of his arms behind his back as she butted him in the side with her hip. The force behind her momentum would have taken him down a month ago, but it failed to do so this time as he pivoted around her, breaking free of her hold. Standing behind her, with both of them facing the same direction, he bent both arms at the elbow and hooked her under both armpits before letting himself free-fall backwards to the mat.

“Oomph!” she grunted out just before they crashed to the ground together.

He’d only just swivelled his head to the side to prevent the back of her head from cracking him in the nose. She was down, caught off-guard by his move. He kept his arms locked around her elbows, holding her squirming figure on top of him, the curves of her round arse warm on his groin.

He was instantly hard and furious with himself.

“PIN BY DRACULA!”

He didn’t let her go immediately, keeping his hands clasped together behind her head. His heart was already pounding with anticipation, and her curls were soft against his jaw. He could smell the light soapy fragrance she wore, just slightly masked by the gleaming body oil on her skin. From behind, he angled up his knee between her legs, and she bucked as he pressed himself against her hip.

“It’s not awkward at all, is it? It’s just sex, after all,” he murmured against her temple. “What’s casual sex between two consenting adults?”

Her arms were arched high over her head and held in place in his grip. “Only if  _ you _ win _ .” _ The words sounded like they were being bit off a wooden stick. In the next moment, she’d straightened her elbows and slithered free of his arm-hook grab, but not before she’d managed to scrabble at his head and pull his hair in such a way that his scalp almost tore free. They rolled away from each other and faced off again.

"You’ve got better,” she said as they circled around each other. Somehow, from the predatory way she was watching him, it didn’t sound like a compliment. Rather, it sounded as though she were evaluating his next move.

“Maybe you’ve always underestimated me,” he said.

This time, he was the one to lunge first. He feinted left, saw her right arm lower to prevent him from getting under her guard there, and lunged the other way, to his right.

His private training had indeed helped him. She stepped back on her left leg, but it was one second too slow, and he ducked his head under her left arm, crouched down and inserted an arm between her legs. The ties of her top were very low down her back, and he managed to grab the back of the fabric with enough force that she was pulled backwards onto the mat with him lying half on top of her.

It was instinct for him to break her fall with his right hand braced behind her back, but it was a mistake. She was accustomed to falling on the mat, and her head never made contact with the floor.

He was lying on top of her right hip, with his arm hugging her other thigh to his shoulder, as her legs struck out every which way to throw him off. Her hands pushed at his shoulders and her foot glanced off his chin as she tried to free herself. When he continued to hold on and climb his way up her body, they made eye contact for a brief heated moment before her hands stopped their attack and she wrapped him close to her chest instead.

It would have felt excruciatingly good, except the embrace was too tight for comfort; meant to choke him into submission. She adjusted her grip so that his face was forced into her left armpit, and she had an arm wrapped around his nape, with her hand clenched into a fist at the base of his neck.

He tensed his neck to prevent her from being able to choke his breath out of him. Even with the chinlock on him, he refused to relinquish the grip his legs had on the bottom half of her body, with his ankles entwined to keep her from slithering free. They were at an impasse; both of them gripping the other so hard they couldn’t escape.

“Underestimated you? Have I really?” she asked, breathing hard but not giving an inch. “Because I thought I knew exactly who you were. I’d have thought I had you... _ pinned _ .”

Her hand hadn’t let go of its grip around his neck, and he growled and tried to duck out of her hold. His right arm was still braced tightly over her body to keep her pressed to the mat and unable to rise. An endless landscape of smooth, tantalising hills and valleys awaited him,  but  he couldn’t breathe because of her bloody fingers around his neck. 

He tried to shake off her fingers with his head alone, but then it became imperative to fall to the ground in faux surrender in order to take a breath. As her one-armed grip around his neck loosened because of her shift in position, he let go of her torso with his right arm and forced her arm up from under his chin, ducking out of her chokehold. He rose to one knee and grabbed her hip just as she attempted to roll away. With one hand around the front of her thigh as it was pressed down on the ground, he sandwiched the hand between her legs in the beginnings of a single leglock head cradle when she swiped his supporting knee from under him.

“Argh!” He growled in irritation as he sprawled down over her body and attempted to turn his off-balance fall into a full-body pin across her abdomen. It wouldn’t last for long, as he had no other leverage over her shoulders and legs.

Even though he’d been on top of her each and every time so far, he’d not managed to lock her into a subdued position. 

She was, even now, trying to roll away from under him. When that didn’t work because of his grip around her torso, she angled her knees up and pulled her hips up off the mat to try to buck him off. The outside of her left forearm cut into the underside of his chin to push him off even as he pressed in on her, feeling the bloom of sweat on her skin as she exerted herself. Her hand formed into a fist so tight that her arm was shaking ever so slightly to maintain her position, and he grinned down at her, reveling in his superior strength in this, at least.

She was still struggling against him, and he turned his head so that her forearm was off his windpipe and only pressing against the side of his neck. Negligently, as though he had all the time in the world to subdue her, he shifted his lower body to pin down her left leg, locking her in place with his crossed ankles.

“Looks like I’m the one—who’s got you pinned,  _ darling,” _ he managed to wheeze out above her.

Her right hand had been bolstering her left arm to push his head away, but now she rotated her right wrist and gripped his nick in a flipped hand grasp, with her thumb pointing downwards and her other fingers under his right ear.

“Not yet you haven’t,” she said with a feral grin, and dug her thumb into his carotid. 

He had to rise up off the ground if he wanted to breathe, and her hold around his neck was so tight that she rose up right along with him. He hooked her arms as soon as he was able, with his hands scooping her upper arms from the top to pull her elbows behind her back as she resisted. She’d worked one knee up between them in the meantime so that he wasn’t able to completely pin her against his chest.

They stared at each other over the crest of her knee.

“I suppose you want a compliment on your progress,” she said. “But you’ll have to win first!”

Her knee straightened under his right armpit, she rotated her hips so that her right hip was now on top, and then her right foot hooked over his right shoulder and cut under his chin.

He let go of her right arm to catch her foot in his left hand, and her left foot glanced off his calf, knee, thigh, and waist as she shimmied up his body so that she was now on his back like a limpet.

She tried to lock his arms with her feet, but he rotated his shoulders and flipped his hands from under her hands. She continued climbing him as her left leg slid down his torso. Her right thigh went over his head and her knee hooked under his chin in the beginnings of a scissored leglock to push him down to the mat. “ _ Fuck!” _ he choked out.

A month ago, such a move would have knocked him sideways after the chokehold she had him in. His throat was still feeling the strain. 

The training, however, in combination with his teeming emotions made him react fast. He fell to the mat, his left arm outstretched to support him, in order to avoid her knee. She followed him down a second later, both of them panting and glistening with sweat. He wasn’t just fighting for the right to fuck anymore; he was simply fighting for dominance. 

He ducked under her kick and hooked his right arm up and over the top of her right leg, working his hand between her thighs to the back by gripping the crotch of her bottoms. Her hot wetness skimmed across his knuckles and almost froze him in his tracks. She hissed in response to the contact.

He’d been so focused on winning that he’d almost forgotten they were half-naked.

He’d almost forgotten that he could  _ have her here _ .

When she twitched at the intimate touch of his hand on her folds, he anticipated her defense even before she tried to kick him in the chest. He made a grab for her ankles just as she flipped over into a triceps dip position.

Another attempt at a scissor leg headlock was thrown by the wayside by his block as she grew visibly more irritated with trying to crawl away from him to regain her breath. “You—!” she said on a bitten-off expletive.

He grinned ferally to himself as he dove in under her kicking assault. In the next moment, he was braced between her legs, catching her right leg in one hand and reaching up to grip her left buttock by the fabric of her bottom. He had a goal just then, to undress her bodily and take that option away from her.

She muttered an oath under her breath as she tried to scramble away and he forcibly pulled her bodily down the mat towards him. Her arse was completely elevated off the mat. Without any traction, she changed tactics. Hands formed into claws and snagged on his pants before he knocked them away. 

His right hand latched on and yanked at her bottoms until they came down her thighs and locked her legs in place. She jack-knifed upwards so that she was almost sitting on his shoulders, but with her legs bound together, she couldn’t swivel around him with her thighs. It didn’t matter what she intended, because he fell forward again, this time ducking his head between her legs and under the shorts now around her knees. He kept his left arm across her chest, with his hand firmly enmeshed in the strips of cloth over her breasts as she tried to fight off his multiple assaults. 

His right hand cupped over her mound and his thumb brushed up against her clit. Her chest concaved under his cheek as his fingers dipped into the slickness of her slit. She was so wet that he closed his eyes at the sensation of it. He was momentarily blind and deafened to everything else as he slid his third finger along her folds and began to work it inside her. Being able to touch her like this was exhilarating, like holding lightning in your grasp—a part of him was five steps ahead, drowning in the blissful intoxication of finally being with her, imagining so much more than this—racing ahead to when he’d finally be able to sink his fevered flesh into her. This was what he’d always wanted before: to win, to pin her, to touch her—and God, she was so wet from the way he was touching her; he was almost out of his mind with excitement. 

Her silken skin threatened to unman him. She was hardly immune to him—she might push him away, but her fingers still clutched at him; her mouth might be twisted into a line of disdain, but her breathy sighs spoke of something else.

He layed a trail of open-mouthed kisses up to the bottom edge of her top—if only she’d allow them to be like this elsewhere. If only they’d had a chance outside of this. But she hadn’t given him a chance, had she? She’d spoken of him being stuck in the past, but what about her? She was the one who couldn’t let go of  _ his _ past. 

In the next second, his anger with her and all the things she had said about him bubbled back to the surface, and he had to shake his head, to shake off the warring emotions within him. With a rough movement, his teeth clamped down on the elastic of her top and pulled.

Her hands came up to roughly shove his head away. Her left knee nearly blacked out his eye as she arched her arse away from him. His hand was torn clear from her cunt. 

She tumbled backwards, rump over head, and managed to resurface in a panting crouch. She was hard of breath, and the strap of her top had fallen off her shoulder. He was still holding onto her bottoms, and she was naked from the waist down. 

They gazed at each other across the mat, and he chucked her swimwear to the side of the ring before flashing her a small, tight grin. He cocked his head at her, letting her go for the moment. Victory was as good as his. He’d had a  _ very _ nice head start.

For a moment, he almost forgot his ultimate goal of revenge—of outing her involvement to the press—but not for long, not when the slide of her skin against his still threatened to unman him.

Perhaps...he could have his cake and eat it too.

* * *

If there was one thing Draco absolutely fucking hated about Hermione Granger, it had to be the way she always nipped out under her swim tops. The sight never failed to give him a raging hard on, and it never failed to distract him. For two months, he’d forborne himself from making even so much as an overly forward touch, and all for what? All so that anyone else who came here could have a go at fighting and winning her. Anyone here could see the clearly demarcated line of her bare cunt, soft and glistening and ready. 

He almost missed the expression on her face, because he was so fixated on what she wasn’t wearing. 

They stood off the mat to the side during the recess, and Draco toweled off before turning back around to face her. 

She looked irritated. She didn’t seem as though she planned to give in gracefully, despite his clearly superior moves on the mat this time. 

He chuckled at the expression on her face.  “Oh, come now. Haven’t you been the one ‘educating’ me on my technique? Now that I’ve improved enough to pin the great Medusa, I think I deserve a prize.”

_ I’m going to wreck you _ , he thought.  _ I’m going to fuck you so completely and totally that you’ll remember it for days to come. Weeks. Years. _

_ For-fucking-ever. _

“A prize?” she said, her teeth white and gleaming under the lights. “If you haven’t found out already, I think you’re going to be very disappointed.”

“That’s a strange way to refer to yourself,” he said. “Especially when you always strut around like you’ve got a golden cunt.”

“I meant with your _ self,”  _ she said with hard emphasis. 

“Oh, I think I’m up to the task.” His eyes raked her body with an unmistakably lewd meaning.

He saw a pink hue spread from her cheeks and spread down to her neck as she flushed with irritation. “Fine. Then I’ll come right out and ask you. If you haven’t broken the pact,  _ how did Blaise Zabini know about me?” _

He could manage to control his temper, since he’d won the first round so handily. “Know about  _ what? _ Know that you’re nothing but a gold digger?” His gaze raked over her dismissively.

Her teeth ground down so hard that he could hear it. “How—how dare you! I’ve never taken a knut of your money!”

Draco scoffed loudly. “Oh, you’ve just been emptying my pockets for your many associations, haven’t you? And how many of those  _ associations  _ are sordid little affairs like this one?”

Her chest was heaving from their fevered exertion in the ring, but she didn’t look tired. She was standing with a ramrod-straight back, her chin held imperiously high, and her hands on her hips as though she were a conquering warrior queen. Her eyes flashed so bright that they almost appeared like white lights. “ _ What  _ is  _ wrong  _ with you? I can’t believe you’d say that. Are you drunk? Or are you on something else? I thought—I thought you’d stopped, but maybe…”

“I’m stone-cold sober,” he said, softly and with emphasis, leaning in so that she heard every syllable. “I’ve just woken up to the sort of woman you are.”

Her mouth was open in perplexed amazement, and she threw up her hands. “What sort of woman I am? You mean, a Mudblood. I can’t believe that after this summer, you’d say that to me. Or maybe I can. Maybe that’s what this has all been about. But guess what? I don’t care what you think of me;  _ you’re  _ still bound by the terms of our  _ pact.” _

For a second, he was distracted by an indescribable expression that flashed across her face. It looked strangely like hurt, and the sight of it pierced somewhere off-center of his chest. He almost wanted to stride forward and comfort her, only he became distracted by her last words. That was the second time she’d referred to the pact. “I don’t know what daft delusion you’re under, but we bloody well don’t  _ have _ any sort of a pact.”

She bared her teeth at him like she wanted to bite him. Something within him leaped at the challenge. They’d danced around each other so docilely for so long that he’d almost forgotten this part of her, and seeing it made him feel almost primitive with desire. 

A loud rush of air expelled from her nose, and she shook her head as though in disbelief. “You don’t even remember, do you? God. Well, you’ll learn your lesson soon enough.” Again, her gaze dipped down his body in that meaningful way that set his senses jangling and activated a warning bell.

He narrowed his eyes.

“ROUND TWO!”

Just as Hermione bent to duck under the ropes again, he grabbed her arm, his voice low and threatening. “I do hope you plan on explaining yourself after that comment.”

She jerked free of his arm just as Gwyneth came up to them. 

Gwyneth paused, her eyes shifting from Draco to Hermione in turn. “Are you ready? Round Two is about to begin.” She had a little amused smile on her face as though she had been laughing with other people about their first round. “That was quite a show you put on earlier. Been practising, have you?” she asked Draco before giving a hearty slap on his bare back. “Good show.” She nodded at Hermione. “Holding your own, Medusa. Be sure to strip before you get in the ring.”

Hermione paused and nodded before she ducked her head back out from between the ropes.

“You too, Drax,” Gwyneth said a little more slowly, as though she had just realised the tension, thick and heavy, in the air. Her eyes fell on Draco’s face for a moment, and she looked on the verge of saying something, but whatever she saw in his expression made her freeze. Her mouth opened and closed, and then she turned away. “Right, well, on with it then.”

They stripped silently beside the mat, the familiar sound of chatter and laughter from the audience behind them. His heart was pounding in his ears again.  _ Learn your lesson _ . What did she mean by that?

He cast a sideways glance at Hermione. Next to him, she jerkily pulled at the straps of her top, tugging it so roughly that it snapped back into place. In the middle of shucking off his pants, he paused with his fingers around the waistband. 

_ She _ was angry with  _ him _ now _ . _

After all the things he’d called her tonight, he supposed she had a right to be. Yet, for all the effort he’d exerted to tip her over the edge, her anger sat wrongly with him. Some part of him didn’t want her angry with him, no matter how much he’d wanted to goad her into a reaction. 

Ahead of him, she tossed her top to one side, cracked her neck, and reentered the ring in one lithe movement by vaulting over the top rope, completely heedless of her nudity. He slowly pulled off his shorts and followed her at a more sedate pace. 

They faced off again at a crouch. He had finally learned his way around the mat and this sport. He started with one hand draped so low to the ground that his fingertips brushed the ground. His eyes dipped down her body, resting on her breasts gleaming with perspiration from their first round. 

His breath was coming in hard again, and it took effort to look back into her face.

“What do you mean, that I need to learn my lesson?” he finally asked when examining her masked demeanour had availed him of nothing.

“Aren’t you forgetting a certain promise you made to me on the night of the Founder’s Auction?” she asked, her eyes glittering up at him. 

His eyes danced across the span of her honey-toned shoulders, unbroken by fabric, over the rounded curves of slightly paler breasts tipped with rosy nipples, down the two lines of taut muscle of her abdomen, and lower still to the bare mound of her cunt below. 

God, she was perfect. As mad as he was, he couldn’t help but want her  _ so fucking much. _

He struggled to focus on her words. Founder’s Annual Charity Drive. The auction. He’d been three sheets to the wind when he saw her. She’d tied him up in an anteroom and backed him into the wall. And then—

She’d promised him a favour. He recalled that much, because he’d thought about it for all of a day before it slipped his mind. The basis of that favour was something to do with her involvement in the fighting ring...something about keeping quiet about it.

Not that he would have had anyone to tell.

He swiped his fingers over his lips and reached over for her arm.

“READY, SET? BEGIN!”

“Is it coming back to you now?” she asked sarcastically, batting away his hand and rolling on her knees. 

“I haven’t told anyone.” He made a grab for her shoulder. Of course that’d be her way of turning this all back on him. “I deserve a prize for putting up with you for the past two months.” His jaw clenched as she dodged away for a third time. 

She sidestepped him and elbowed him in his ribs as she passed. A glimpse of her showed that she had a look of intense concentration on her face. “For putting up with  _ me,” _ she said, her teeth bared. The look of annoyance faded from her face, only to be replaced with an expression of suppressed glee. “Right, the Mudblood. I’d forgotten about what a prejudiced bigot you are. Congratulations, you had me completely fooled. You do deserve a prize— _ for being the biggest fucking liar.” _

They were talking like adolescents, and he was having trouble concentrating on the game. She was also fucking manipulative, distracting him by trying to turn the tables on him. If anyone was the liar here, it wasn’t him. 

Even now, she was covering up her missteps and making it seem like  _ he _ was the one who’d hurt her, when she—when she’d completely led him on and made him feel things he thought were dead and dormant. She’d made him feel hope and yearning and—everything that she’d had no intention of ever fulfilling.

Draco lunged to her right. This time, when she ducked her head under his arm, he gripped her left arm and pulled her roughly forward until she stumbled into him. “If anyone’s the liar around here, it’s you.”

“Fucking let go of me!” Her red mouth curled around the obscenity, and she jerked back her right hand and slapped him across the face.

They heard the whistle as Gwyneth’s voice rose. “Striking! Penalty point deduction!”

He'd barely felt the slap; his head hadn’t even turned. He simply caught that wrist too, pulling her resisting body into his. He hissed as her bare stomach slammed up against his hip. All the blood rushed down to his groin as they pressed up against each other, bare breast to bare breast, only separated by the slide of sweat. His erect cock was digging into her belly, and he let her feel it as he said, “ Lie again. You do it so well.”

Hermione's eyes flashed dangerously at him, and for a moment she didn't struggle. He was certain that that brain of hers was forming clever rebuttals and defenses, arguments to back up her side of the story. It was almost laughable how well he read her now, and he emitted an angry huff before he let go of both her wrist and her arm. Before she could move further afield, he grasped her head in his hands, pulled her in, and kissed her open-mouthed on the lips. 

It was filled with heat and anger and, despite it all, all the passion he still felt for her no matter what lies she told him.

He heard a groan and was unsure which of them it belonged to. Her breasts were pressed up against his chest, and he had never felt anything as good as this moment right now, just when she was too startled to react. For one glorious moment, she kissed him back, just as angrily, just as passionately, with all the pent-up emotions that he knew she had within her. Two mouths devouring one another, two mouths battling to suckle the other’s tongue. It was heated, it was wet, it was fucking amazing.

Then the moment ended. She struggled to break free, her fingernails scratching his knuckles, digging into his wrist.

That was all the warning he had before she bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood.

“ _ Fuck!” _ He shoved her off, his left hand automatically going up to his mouth. His tongue came out to brush over the injured spot. It didn’t feel that bad, and only a small drop of blood stained his finger.

It effectively jerked him out of his reverie. He absolutely hated her for the effect she had on him, how the momentary brush of her lips was a temporary  _ Obliviate _ on his anger.

She backed away, the expression in her eyes wary and not a little puzzled as she gazed down at his hand and then back up to his face. He shook his head slowly, to shake off the ephemeral mist of longing and lust that kept clouding his brain, and advanced across the mat to her as she retreated.

“How’d you do it?” She continued to retreat around the mat, her breath stuttering out in pants. “How’d you break the pact?”

“For the last time, I didn’t break  _ anything. _ ” He was distracted by the gleam of sweat dancing along her chest, those swollen red lips pouty from their kiss, the slight jostle of her high, firm breasts. He reached out a hand for her shoulder, and she knocked him off. 

“Fight!” shouted someone from the sidelines. “This isn’t a ballroom!”

Hermione looked away towards the voice, and Draco gripped her hair and pulled her in. 

"Son of a bitch!” Hermione yelled, and punched him in the midriff with the edge of her fist in a side-swiping motion.

Another whistle and Gwyneth’s shout: “This is a clean fight! No striking, no hair pulling!”

He grunted from the impact to his midsection and let go of her hair. When he did so, she immediately dropped to one leg and kicked out her right foot at his left instep. Instead of stumbling, he regained his balance in a lunge. But she wasn't finished with him yet; she ducked and pulled his bent knee out from under him, and then he was down on the mat.

Draco rolled to his other side and was up immediately, hooking a hand behind her right knee and yanking hard so that she landed flat on her back. She was sitting up in an instant, even with her leg caught in his grasp. Her hands were flying in his face, and he ducked as her left elbow came up with the intent to hook him around the neck. At the same time, his left arm jerked her right supporting arm out from under her.

She fought furiously to get free of his hold on her lower body, both slim arms coming up rapidly to flail at him about the shoulders. He tucked his chin in under her right arm and forced his right arm straight behind her head to grab at her opposite shoulder. His left hand held her right thigh, and from the waist down he was nestled right between her thighs. 

They were locked like this for a moment as neither let go nor gave way. They pivoted in place, both still maintaining their grips, dancing over the mat on their knees and arse in a strange, horizontal facsimile of a tango.

From the waist up, she had twisted away from his hold even as her right arm hooked around his neck, just as his right arm around the back of her shoulder acted as an arm bar to keep her head down and unable to look up. They fell to the ground, rolling once as she tried to break free and he refused to let go or surrender to her chokehold. There was only the sound of heavy pants and the occasional whine as they wheezed against each other. Tendons stood out on their limbs, muscles tensed, and skin flashed white amidst the flush of exertion.

He let go of his arm bar move first and ducked his head out of her chokehold. She was on the ground, supported on her left elbow as he prowled on all fours over her figure, and she threw her leg over his head again. He evaded; she attempted the knee choke. It was repetitive, like the refrain of a chorus.

Draco somersaulted over her in a tumble to break free of her legs. She struck out one final blow with her leg, but he had the advantage now: his head was in her chest space, and he shoved her down, one hand cupping her breast as he pinned her to the ground. She hissed in a breath. Her stomach quivered under his mouth, and he dragged his bottom lip over the line of her abdomen, tasting sweat and sweetness on his tongue.

“POINT TO DRACULA!”

His pin lasted only seconds before she launched herself off the mat with her left leg over his throat. Her right hand batted at his temple, and she spun out from under him to ride his shoulder-blades, pushing him to the mat with another arm sweep to make sure his right hand was no longer supporting his weight.

He had, however, anticipated something like this. As soon as her right leg left the ground to latch around his shoulders, he stepped out with both feet, reached across his body with the right hand she’d just swept out under him. He went into a roll on his right side and flattened her under his back, with both of them facing upwards. Her feet continued to kick around his face dangerously, and he used his arms to separate her legs before turning over. 

“POINT TO DRACULA!”

He actually startled upon the sight of her bare, shaven cunt right under his face. Their wrestling had been so contentious that it had been more like an actual fight and less like a sex fight. What he would have given for her to just lay there for him. But the fighting wasn’t concluded, her shoulders were still up, and she was hauling herself backwards on her hands, trying to get away from the grappling hold he had on her thighs. 

She was out of breath, panting harder than she had ever done in the previous round or in all the matches they’d had. She was tiring, tendrils of her hair matted around her forehead from the sweat, but she gamely strove to rise. 

“ _ Stay down, dammit,” _ he heard the words, but it took a moment for him to realise he’d been the one to speak them. 

He reached upward for her right shoulder and pushed her down at the same time as her foot made contact with his chest and he was thrown off. Before she could get up on her feet, he was back, grabbing her around the shoulders and locking her tight against him.

Their pulses fluttered in tandem, and she ceased to fight for a moment, stilling in his embrace. Whether she was too tired or for some other reason, for that one second they sat there on the mat; him crouched on his knees, and her half off-balance on her rump. She was supported from being pushed to a prone position by her left hand, and her right hand was curved over his opposite shoulder, her thumb braced at the edge of his clavicle to hold him at arm’s length.

In that particular moment, they seemed not to be wrestling for dominance, but to actually be a couple enamoured with one another. If someone had sculpted them, they would have depicted an art piece he knew by heart.

The particular sculpture he had in mind depicted a nude marble couple embracing one another in a sitting position. Their lips were only a centimetre apart, never to meet; frozen forever in a white stoney state.

He’d been told that they were a pair of star-crossed lovers caught in a moment just before cuckolding their significant others. Or perhaps they were just on the precipice of being killed, having never even consummated their passion for one another.

It seemed almost ominous that his mind would flash to that thought when by his count, he was almost the uncontested winner. Everything in his mind gloried over her chest pressed so intimately against his, her breath intermingling with his. 

He could almost pretend she wanted this, like she was yearning for him to draw her closer. Except, of course, for the contentious way she had fought against him, with her lip curled up in a sneer, and the fighting words she’d thrown at him. Everything that went to show just how much she thought him beneath her.

It was, most probably, one of her damnable mind games, the kind that she was so unbelievably brilliant at. It was just another way she planned to win out over him, as she had in all the times they’d gone up against one another in scholastic pursuits at Hogwarts.

He’d be damned before that happened yet again. She’d made a fool of him for too long.

As she rested from her exertions, he shifted his position, hooking his feet around the insides of her calves. Another roll, and he was on top of her, his knees pressed down on the insides of her thighs and keeping her down. Her hands began to strike at him again, but they were noticeably weaker blows, and it was easy enough to keep his face clear as he pressed down on her shoulders with his forearms.

She was down.

“TIME!”

Hermione stared up at him, her chest heaving, her eyes wide and locked on his for one moment before her head fell backwards on the mat.

Draco had won.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, much thanks to my invaluable trio of hard workers: disenchantedglow, kahcicamera, and lunamionny, who all gave me such wonderful feedback that really, if you don't like the fic, it's their fault. Haha. Okay, but seriously, they helped me iron out so many problematic issues with characterisation. Thank you, guys!!


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco decides between satisfaction and the high road.

Her eyes were dark, blazing depths of fury. 

She didn’t say a word as Gwyneth announced the winner. There were claps and whistles for Draco as his arm was raised up into the air and he was extolled as the only man who had beaten the famed Medusa. Hermione was a silent, bare figure next to Gwyneth. Not a word of praise was spoken for her, and he felt a stab of self-righteous anger on her behalf.

They were left in the center of the mat, standing two metres from one another as Gwyneth ducked out between the ropes and left them to it.

Presumably to fuck it out, as he pleased.

Hermione stared at Draco before letting her eyes drift away. Displeasure and irritation was written in every line of her gleaming body. He couldn’t help the smirk that slowly crept onto his face; an expression that he knew he ought to control. Victory over this woman was simply too rare and precious a commodity that, paired with his anger, he simply wished for nothing more than her acknowledgement of his superiority.

“I imagine that compliments are in order,” he said, slow and languid as though his cock weren’t throbbing at the thought of being buried inside her. At that moment, he couldn’t think of anything else but her sweet, pulsing cunt contracting around him. 

Victory was finally _ his _.

That burst of triumph dimmed as his hooded eyes watched her. It faded even more as she slowly moved to stand in front of him. All the heat rushed to his balls as he twitched at being this close to her.

She glanced up at him once without being prompted before she dropped to her knees. 

She closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and leaned in.

It took a moment’s hesitation, the fading of crowing delight, for him to stop her with a hand hard on her chin. “What are you doing?”

The expression on her face before she’d dropped her chin had been one filled with resolve—with the slightest underscoring of calculation. He knew all of the infinitesimal kaleidoscope of her expressions by now. She was brilliant, she was clever, but a poker face, she didn’t have. 

She paused at eye-level with his cock. Her right hand was a lightly clenched fist braced at the top of his thigh. She still didn’t look at him until he shook her chin slightly. Then her lashes lifted, and he saw the glitter of her eyes. “What all men want, I would think.” 

“You don’t know a bloody thing about me,” he said. “And I know you a lot better than you think. I know exactly when you’re up to something.” His words were bitten out through clenched teeth.

He’d won this. He’d proven his physical dominance and superiority over her, and yet wheels were still spinning in her head to—what? She was planning something, that much was clear.

Fury was beginning to churn in his would come to fruition. They weren’t made to come together here, in this sordid arena, with everyone wearing masks, shouting and cheering them on, with still others evaluating their performance. If she’d wanted to visit ancient ruins, he knew of numerous places to which he could take her, where the sight of her would be for his eyes only. There were numerous other historic sites in the Malfoy holdings, if only he’d known about her predilection for them. They didn’t have to be here, engaged in sordid sport to appease the onlookers.

Instead, here they were, with her forcing this and turning an angry face on him through all of it. How the bloody fuck dare she?

When she was standing, he gripped her around the hip with one hard hand that jerked her forward with not a hint of gentleness. Her stomach slammed in against his rigid, jutting shaft, and he was almost unmanned right then and there. His other hand clamped around the nape of her neck, digging into her wild curly hair. Inexorably, he pulled her in until she rose on her tiptoes to meet him. 

Silver eyes clashed with brown eyes so dark that they seemed black under her mask. His mouth came down to capture hers in a kiss brimming with anger and frustration. He set out to dominate her, by covering her mouth with his and thrusting his tongue through her lips. This was his by right, by all the saints and ancient gods, and he had earned this; he had _ won _ this. She’d made him suffer, she’d pegged him in front of an audience and claimed it as his due if he planned to stay in her domain, and now she was reneging with her sullenness.

She stood there and let him kiss her, her hands clamped into fists at her side, her mouth open and willing but unresponsive. His hands gripped her on either side of her waist, dancing up the sides of her torso, pulling, tugging, _ urging _ her to respond.

With a groan that he felt rather than heard, she finally gave in, her lips gently sucking on his tongue in a heated invitation. 

It was magic, it was fire, it was lightning flashing at the center of a tornado. All the world melted away around him, so that he was only aware of her; of that sweet lingering fragrance of hope and sunlight, of warm skin and firm muscle. Nothing else but the desire for her remained. He was lifting her up on her tiptoes, his hips were canting up against hers, his cock seeking its home at the juncture of her thighs.

Somewhere, a faint voice of logic intruded—or perhaps he was so aware of all their past history, up to and including the one time when he’d mistaken her actions for consent. He pulled away with effort. She was breathing hard, and her eyes opened to lock with his. He could see when the lust dwindled and left that disingenuous expression in her eyes—the one that said that even though she desired him, she had more than one ace up her sleeve.

He stared down at her in disbelief. Her lips were no longer red with lipstick, but plump and wet and well-kissed. It took every iota of self-control within him to not bend down to kiss her again. “Is this a new game of yours?” he asked. His right hand tightened on the hair at the base of her neck, forcing her head up higher. A part of him hoped that he was wrong, that he’d overestimated her penchant for revenge and unorthodox thinking. “What do you have planned for me in that clever head of yours?”

“Nothing,” she said, far too quickly. “As you said, I lost fair and square.” She stared straight back at him with unblinking eyes. 

Liar. 

He laughed harshly into her face, resting his forehead against hers for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut. He could feel the heat of her body against his chest, those naughty nipples pebbling against his torso. His cock was aching, had been aching since the start of this and for weeks now. For weeks, he’d staved off his hunger for her and kept himself from her out of respect for her. He’d fought this for her; he’d won her favours legitimately. 

Perhaps it was time to face facts—the only way Draco Malfoy was ever going to get anywhere close to Hermione Granger's cunt was if they were hidden by their masked personas. It was clear he’d never even gotten close enough to her where it really mattered, that she’d not trusted him even when she had no proof of any wrongdoing on his part. She might desire him, but she still wasn’t letting him within an arm’s length of her.

He kissed the side of her unresponsive mouth, all the while speaking to her. “I know how you really feel about me, even though you think I’m a dirty, disgusting Death Eater,” he whispered against her ear. His hand reached down her front and stroked her between the legs. Against his cheek, he felt her indrawn breath. “Even if you hate me, your silky little cunt doesn’t.”

_ Just how many more things did he have to apologise for in order for her to trust him? _

When it came down to it, the vendetta she held against him was far too strong to let go of permanently, no matter how long and hard he set out to redeem himself in her eyes. _ He would always be suspected, no matter what. _

That was what it meant to be Draco Malfoy, owner of a thousand sins.

The anger slowly became enveloped by a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. A feeling that had threatened to drown him entirely towards the end of the war— a feeling that no matter what he did, it was never going to be enough. _ He simply wasn’t good enough or clever enough or strong enough to break free of the bonds on him. _

"Without any evidence whatsoever, you’ve condemned me. By what logic have you decided that I broke the supposed pact?” He paused his fingers in his exploration of her seam; they were frozen just slightly inside of her, tensed against her pulsing core**.**

She stood as still as one of the marble mannequins in Madame Malkin’s storefront window. Or at least she tried to. Her thighs flinched as he stroked her with all the gentleness he could summon up, when everything inside him cried to simply bear her down to the mat. He felt her throat bob up and down with the pressure to remain motionless under his touch. 

Her breath hitched, and she made a ragged sound halfway between a whimper and a soft grunt. Her thighs fluttered and she twisted away from him. His fingers tore out of her core, but he caught her with his hands around her waist and pulled her back in, hard against him. 

It took her only a moment to regain her balance. She shook her head and pushed at his chest. As though the words were bursting out of her, she blurted, “How else would Blaise know about it? How else did he know that I—come here? No one else knew. Only you," she said, so stubbornly that his eyes narrowed. A small fist came up to pound lightly at his shoulder—not in protest of how he was holding her so tightly against him so that she couldn’t avoid how hard he was against her thigh—but in insistence. “Just—stop _ lying _ about it. Just tell me the truth!”

He set his jaw. Anger should have taken the edge off his hard-on, but instead he was still achingly, urgently aware of her, and only the fragments of his self-control were holding him back. “The truth? The truth, you sanctimonious bitch, is that you revealed yourself to him! He figured it out for himself. Or didn’t you realise that he was one of the members here?”

“Blaise?” Her mouth worked a few times but nothing came out. Her eyes were wide through the gaps in her mask. “He—was in here?”

The audience were making grumbling noises. A whistle sounded, undoubtedly from Gwyneth. Hermione’s head turned to where but Draco kept his eyes on Medusa, shaking her slightly. “Did you think I would be the only one to figure it out? Flattering as that is, you gave yourself away.”

“Draco—”

“I do like how the first thing that occurred to you was that I’d broken my promise,” he said, only a tinge of bitterness flavouring his words. “And that you didn’t think to ask me about it before jumping to conclusions.”

“I just thought—” She bit her lip and looked down his body, at the hardness that was still pressed up against her. She shifted her stance, rose up higher on her toes, almost as though to accommodate him. “If you had broken it, then you wouldn’t be able to…” She drifted off.

Below them, someone shouted coarsely, “Get on with it, ya bloody cunts! Fuck already!”

Draco was so focused on her that the yelling didn’t even register. It took a second, but the penny finally dropped. “What?” he asked. When she didn’t immediately respond, he gave her another shake. “What would have happened? What did you do to me?”

He watched the lines of her throat move as she shook back her head, as though to regain her composure, as if by regaining her bravado she was showing that she had the higher moral ground. His fingers dug deeper into her shoulder until she winced. She’d probably have marks on her soft skin tomorrow, but he hardened his mind against the idea.

“If I had said anything, what would have happened to me?” he asked. He twined a hand into her hair and wrapped his fist around the locks so that her head jerked forward, their faces not a centimetre away from one another. “You’re so certain about it, aren’t you, Granger? You must have done something to me. What would have fucking happened if I’d told?”

He was remembering that moment during Professor Umbridge’s short tenure as the DADA professor. Specifically the time he stood in her office with a few of the other members of the Inquisitorial Squad. That had been the very last time in his life that he’d felt inclined to keel-tow to authority. His last year of innocence, so to speak. If Dolores Umbridge had continued climbing the ranks, and rumour had it that she would succeed and move into Albus Dumbledore’s position, he had a very good chance at eventually making Head Boy.

Having someone enamoured of Lucius Malfoy as Headmistress would’ve resulted in nothing but good for Draco, despite the fact that they had all made fun of how piggy-faced Professor Umbridge was.

It was at that time when he waited in her office, surrounded by a litany of meowing, that there was a knock at the door, and a girl wearing Ravenclaw colours came timidly through the doorway. She wasn’t in his year, or else he’d have recognised her. Draco and the other members of the Inquisitorial Squad were made to wait outside for “just a moment,” which they spent idly chatting and joking around. That ended when there was a loud scream inside the office. 

On the pretext of finding out if their help was needed, Draco had knocked briefly before opening the door. Behind him, two bodies crowded against his back to try to push into the room, and Draco elbowed them back, not turning around even when he heard a yelp. “Professor?” he asked, calmly, smoothly. “Do you require assistance?”

His eyes scanned the room. The Ravenclaw sat in front of the desk with her back to them, completely still as though in a state of shock, her breathing heavy and laboured. Professor Umbridge stood over her. “There, there,” she was saying in her high-pitched voice. “Now I’m going to need you to repeat those words exactly to the officials, do you understand? I’m sure it won’t be difficult at all.”

“But my face…” The voice of the girl seemed to be thin and wavery, on the edge of hysteria. “I don’t understand…”

Crabbe and Goyle pushed into him from behind and they crossed over the threshold of the office. The girl turned around, and Draco caught a glimpse of scared, tearstained eyes and a red, blotchy face. There was a sharp intake of breath behind him as Goyle took in the girl and then Crabbe gave a soft snigger. 

“My dear girl,” Professor Umbridge said, her entire attention on the girl in front of her. “It’s a simple case of the boils and can be easily fixed. But first I simply must have your assurance that what you say is the absolute truth and nothing but the truth.”

“You can fix my face then?” the girl asked, turning back to Umbridge, her back hunched. There was a hitched quality to her voice, as though she were about to break into tears.

“Certainly. It’s a simple enough trick.” Professor Umbridge cleared her throat with two _ hem-hem _ s and waved her wand. “ _ Finite.” _

“Did it work? Did it work?” This time, the girl launched out of her chair and peeked over her shoulder at them again before ducking her head in a self-conscious manner and picking up a glass-paned picture on the professor’s desk. 

This time, with the light falling across her face, Draco could see what had her on the verge of a breakdown. There were boils all over her face, but across the bridge of her nose, the boils were smaller and closer together, spelling out the word “sneak.”

“It’s still—it’s still there,” the girl said, her voice breaking on a sob. “Make it—make it go away. I’ve told you what I know! Bring her here and make her take it back! It’s got to be her. There’s no one else who would have done it!”

“Who?” Draco asked when Professor Umbridge seemed distracted with the Floo.

The professor turned around and, for the first time, seemed to notice their presence in her office. “My dear Marietta is a heroine. She has come forward with information on an underground club meeting at Hogwarts, and we shall soon find out who is behind it all.”

Draco said the first name to pop into his head. “Potter.” 

Professor Umbridge smiled thinly. “Well, then. Boys, I’ll summon you when it is time. But for now, please wait outside until I’ve called for you.”

Marietta still seemed stuck in the horror of her reflection staring back at her. She was holding the picture at different angles to see herself more clearly. “It’ll go away, you said? Then why couldn’t you fix me?”

“Like all adolescent things, it will pass. Soon enough.” Professor Umbridge’s small, sweet smile hadn’t wavered. “It is, after all, only the work of a fifth year girl.”

“Can it be fixed?” Marietta asked, her voice sounding high and stuttered, panicked and hysterical. “I can’t—I can’t—This wasn’t supposed to happen like this—” She broke off into racking sobs.

Draco didn’t need to be told then just who had cursed Marietta. He already knew.

* * *

Draco stared at Hermione, his chest heaving. _ What the hell did she do? _

"I considered disfiguring boils, of course,” Hermione said, her head tilted back so she could stare dead in his eyes. “Or a tattoo on your pelvis with an arrow pointing down that said ‘Property of a Mudblood.’ I’d imagine that’d be difficult to explain away in the future.”

Out of habit, he flinched when the slur came out of her mouth. Then his eyes sharpened. “But that wasn’t it, was it, Granger? Not only would that statement be untrue since you’ve never seen fit to _ have _ me, but also that can’t have been what you did because if it were, the lack of a mark would be clear and definite proof of my innocence. So what _ punishment _ did you deem fit for this crime of negligence?”

Her lips set in a hard line. “I thought losing the use of your favourite instrument would be a harsher blow.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, now you know that you’re wrong. Since it’s working perfectly.” Neither of them looked down at the organ in question, but it pulsed against her stomach, a long, thick rod that was still aching for her, despite all that had gone before them.

She shook her head. “That’s not the hex. We won’t know until you…” she trailed off, her chin jutted out in silent obstinacy.

He nearly laughed aloud at that. He’d almost be proud of her, except he was so fucking pissed off. “We won’t know until I come? At which time, it ceases to work? A perpetual case of the blue balls? You’re a fucking menace. That’s one fucked up punishment for loose lips. I’m so sorry I didn’t turn out to be more of a bastard, Granger. Wouldn’t you have loved it if I were?”

“Of course not!” she said. “And this—this is why you came here tonight? To accuse me of whatever it is you’ve cooked up in your head?”

The recrimination in her words made him pause. His eyes raked her from head to toe before he removed his hand from her so quickly that she stumbled back a pace. “It was simply to show you that I can win. Not that there’s anything to win here. You can keep your golden cunt to yourself. I find that I’m not in the mood.”

There was a litany of boos that grew louder and louder as he walked off the mat and ducked between the ropes to leave the podium. 

She might have called his name after him, but he didn’t look back once. His head was held high up as he strode off, dignity intact. Bloody sanctimonious bitch. He was well rid of her.

And it’d sink in, right after he got blindingly, blithering drunk.

* * *

He was in such a fury when he Disapparated, he didn’t have a destination in mind and only realised his surroundings when he looked up to see the inside of the Manor.

Outside the open door of the library, he could see inside where he'd spoken to Blaise. The glasses had been cleared away and returned to his drinks cabinet, but the two vials of _ Praeteriens _vapor stood there where he'd left them. The house elves never touched them anymore, not after the time he'd flown into a terrible rage when the elves had locked them up and ensured they couldn’t fly into his grasp when summoned.

He hadn't had a vial in almost a month, and now that seemed like a terrible tragedy. It was, for example, far more tragic than letting himself consider the impossibility of being with someone he'd always despised and who'd hated him equally in return. The vials beckoned to him, glowing a pale blue, with infinitesimal sparks of gold, a crystalline potion that was as beautiful to look at as it was to inhale. 

_ Escape _, it seemed to call out across the space between them. Why not? Why waste your moments thinking of regrets, when every moment could be lived to its fullest?

His parents, after all, did not believe in regrets. 

Something held him back. Another voice, sounding irritatingly like Hermione's, said that he could resist its allure, that the time he'd spent on these potions, the damage he'd wrought on himself and his property, and the thousands of Galleons he'd wasted was in part due to this habit of his. He hadn’t realised it until just these past few weeks just how bloody high he could get on life alone—that the rush of flying or the joy of laughing could score a hit just as potent as one manufactured from out of a bottle. It’d been just another expensive habit that he could afford and one that had been encouraged by his friends…

_ What friends? _ that voice asked. _ Blaise, whom you use only when it suits you? _

Get out of my head, he thought, gritting his teeth and striding forward until he stood next to the table. He gazed around the room, at the portraits that lined the walls. Outside the room, more portraits and paintings hung in the Entry Hall. Still more in the saloons. They were stacked in storage and in the Dowager House. Everywhere he turned when growing up, there had been a litany of voices to remind him of his duty to his name, his position, his blood, his ancestry, and everything that made up what it meant to be a Malfoy. 

Where were they all now? The portraits had known when his mother died and donned black garb. They'd started whispering instead of talking. Then when his father died, half of the portraits stopped talking altogether, leaving only the oils and watercolours of fictitious people to chatter nonsensically in the background. They stopped whenever he appeared; like biddies at a tea party who only paused in their gossiping when their quarry was present. 

He’d wondered if the lack of occupants in the Manor had something to do with their silence. Even when Hermione had been around, they’d been more vocal. Certainly, a few of their comments had been filled with insults and slurs, but everything had seemed more alive.

Now silence reigned again, as though they were sitting in stiff, unspoken judgement of him.

All his life, it'd been imperative that everyone knew he was a Malfoy. _ He _no longer even knew who he was. 

For a while, he thought he'd known who he was—someone who wasn't a monster, someone who had hope, despite all that he'd done and all that people believed of him. 

He'd started to believe in that hope too.

But then, she had turned that belief on its head.

Draco Malfoy wasn't someone anyone worthy would want. She’d made that clear to him. If the most forgiving, willing-to-take-on-a-charity-case woman wouldn’t give him a second chance, why would anyone else? He clearly wasn't someone who _ deserved _ a second chance. He was someone who was only useful as long as he had Galleons to offer. It'd been something he'd been proud of for as long as he could remember. The fact that his father could gift the entire Quidditch team with brooms had been something to boast of. The fact that he had met Wizarding Ministers half the world over had been something to gloat over. The fact that he'd never had to do without was something the lessers could only dream of.

Until all of that was torn away and revealed to be a pretty lie he'd simply believed in, like everything else his parents had told him.

Nobody wanted any part of him, and it had never before been so clear. _ Galleons to burn. _ She'd agreed with Ronald Weasley. _ She wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. _When worse came to worst, she'd always believe the worst of him. 

Draco slammed a fist down on top of the heavy oak desk. Nothing atop the desk moved a centimetre, and the pain that bit into his hand felt almost good, a physical sensation that contrasted pleasantly with the tight knot in his throat. The glitter of the vials mocked him, as though asking why he was still holding out when there was no reason to do so. 

He reached out and grabbed the first vial, popping the stopper with his thumb. An effervescent mist floated out in a shimmery curlicue. The pleasant fragrance of crisp cool rain reached him, followed by the woodsy scent of the freshly waxed koa wood of a broomstick. The smell of Quidditch leathers and the crispness of an early morning breeze high up in the air. His mother's soft gardenia perfume that she'd used as long as he'd known her. His father's aftershave along with the mints he'd use to bribe Draco into behaving when he was younger. 

Then the smell of summer, of sun, of a field of wildflowers, of Hermione Granger. 

Of heat, of warmth, of the heady taste of sweat and skin and musk.

He was lost in a pleasant whirl of memories past, but at the last thought, his eyes flashed open. The bottle was held right up to his nose, the tendrils of shimmery blue mist working themselves into his subconscious, taunting him, teasing him of things never to be again. For a moment, he could _ hear _ Hermione’s light voice, murmuring things in a tenor just low enough not to be understood.

His hand tightened and he hurled the bottle as far from him as he could manage to throw.

He was breathing so hard he didn't even hear the vial make contact against the ground. The second vial went the way of the first, but it landed closer; he heard the crunch of glass as it shattered. 

He was already turning his back on his outburst, exploding the lock off the drinks cabinet. He fumbled around in the shelves until, with a growl of impatience, he summoned the bottle of absinthe from the back, knocking over at least three other bottles as it flew into his hand. He summoned a glass—because he wasn’t an uncouth Neanderthal—and then he was pouring the drink into the cup so hastily that most of it splashed over onto the desk. The scent of wormwood wafted up, and he could almost taste it on his tongue. He had never had such an uncommon thirst for it before. 

_ You know, I prefer you like this. Sober. _

The glass was almost up to his lips.

_ What is _ wrong _ with you? Are you drunk? _

He didn’t need alcohol to act like a blinding fool, it seemed.

It’d be so easy to numb out the events of the evening, to blind himself to everything that had gone before. To that empty victory that he’d never planned to claim. Having her masked and in front of everyone would have been a travesty of everything he still felt for her.

It’d be so easy to drink and drink until oblivion took over and that pleasant fuzziness dimmed the edges of his subconscious.

He was just about to throw the contents of his glass down his throat when he realised that there was a cloth-wrapped package on his desk. Without setting down his glass, it took only one wave of his wand to bring the package closer and another slash for the wrapping to split neatly apart. He stared down at the contents before him. 

Wizarding photographs. An entire stack of them. 

For a moment, he couldn't recall why a stack of photographs of him and Hermione were in front of him. In that moment, his eyes widened in alarm as he flipped through the pictures, wondering if someone was seeking to blackmail Hermione—or him. It'd be one and the same because of course he'd pay and then wring the culprit's throat. If anyone thought they were getting to her that way—

Realisation kicked in scant seconds later.

His charms had worked. 

No anonymous extortionist had taken the photographs. _ Draco _had been the one to arrange for them. For just such a reason too. They were indeed blackmail material. The two of them were locked in all manner of intimate and provocative positions. At certain angles, without the ropes in view, the pictures looked like the ones found in the naughty magazines Blaise had. 

His ring persona, Count Dracula, might just as well not have existed; even with a mask on, his blond hair and height showed exactly who he meant to impersonate. Even without the original lines of the Dark Mark still slightly discernible under her charm, and the damning scars across his torso, he was recognisable at a glance. If he had stayed to pull off her mask, there would be no secret as to her identity and the types of activities she engaged in with former Death Eaters.

She would be ruined.

Draco stared down at the pictures in his hands, his glass all but forgotten. There he was with Hermione as Medusa, both of them dressed in their wrestling gear and masks. Her anger and determination were clear on the bottom half of her face, while he…

While Draco stared at her as though she were the last meal he would ever have. Hungrily. Desperately. Intensely. As if there were nothing else in his sights. 

Just her.

He slowly flipped through the stack of photographs. There were the two of them in the first round, just before starting. When they’d gotten a lockhold on each other. The second round where they’d looked like lovers—

Swallowing hard, he tossed the photos back on the desk, where they lay face-up, the figures continuing to loop in their nude dance. Even when he closed his eyes, the tiny replicas continued to replay on the insides of his eyelids, like an unending Pensieve reel.

One image was of her getting down on her knees and starting to lean in. Something he’d imagined, but even when it was within his grasp, he’d stopped her before the dream could be realised. It should be truly wank-worthy material, but he’d found that the photograph made him ill to his stomach. Shame curdled in his gut. He was ashamed of himself for _ still _ wanting her all the while knowing she didn’t want him and had thought the worst of him.

He couldn’t see the moving pictures without wanting—_ her _. 

Not this paltry two-dimensional version of her that moved on a ten-second loop. Not this silent reel without the sound of her voice, her breathy sighs, her laughter.

He was an idiot. He never should have had the pictures taken. What would he do with them now? They’d lie around the place and remind him of what he didn't have and couldn’t have. Had he actually thought he could’ve used them against her like that, even without her tying him to a hex-activating contract? Had he thought it would be an easy thing—to unmask her for the world to see by blithely sending the photographs in to the Prophet? 

He couldn’t even stand the thought that there had been other men before him who had seen her like that, and she wasn’t even _ his _ to begin with.

The absolutely funny thing was that even knowing she’d hexed him was not enough to turn him off her. 

He reached over and flipped over the photographs so that they sat in an uneven stack, face-down. Then he picked up his glass again. His hand was trembling slightly. 

He badly needed that drink.

A crack of Apparition sounded in the Manor and stayed his hand. Draco looked up. Back before he became the sole heir and resident of this place, there had been specific entry points for people. The Anti-Apparition Ward had been in force, and the Floo in the Entry Hall the only point of entry, other than through the front door. 

He’d dismantled all of that. The Floo wasn’t connected anymore, except to specific residences, and Apparition was opened up only to certain people. Currently, there were only three people who had access. His trainer wouldn’t be here at this hour, and Blaise had muttered something about making other plans. 

Unless Blaise had changed his mind, that would only leave—

Draco’s feet thudded to the ground and he lurched upright to stride unsteadily to the doors of the library. Even though logic indicated there was no one else who'd visit him right this very minute, he was still taken aback to find Hermione Granger standing there in the foyer of the Manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, all the thanks to a truly invaluable team: disenchanteglow for having to listen to characterisation issues, kahcicamera for helping me work out plot issues, and lunamionny for going above and beyond the usual Britpicking chores. Serious love to these guys.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Showdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An insanely long chapter, because there just wasn't a good place to break up the tension.

Hermione Granger hadn't been in the entrance hall for a full minute, facing away from the library with her eyes on the stairs, when Pinny the house elf appeared. 

“Mistress Granger,” the house elf said, and Draco could see that it was blinking its large, limpid eyes at her. “I is taking your shawl?”

Before she could say anything else, Draco cut in. “That’ll be all, Pinny.”

The house elf disappeared. Hermione’s head whirled around to take him in. Instantly, she seemed to tense up. “Draco.” Her voice echoed in the empty hall.

He sneered at her, taking in her changed appearance, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Hair pulled into a frizzy half-updo, a long-sleeved tee-shirt atop those scandalous blue trousers she seemed to like wearing. Suddenly she was a completely different person from the one that had been in the ring a few hours ago. “Draco? Wasn’t it Malfoy just a little while ago?”

She opened her mouth to comment and then closed it without making a sound, apparently deciding against arguing with him. Her eyes drifted down his figure, taking inventory just as he had done, her gaze stopping at the glass in his hand. His finger twitched, and then he defiantly lifted it to his mouth to take a sip, purposefully swishing the alcohol in his mouth before swallowing.

He regretted it immediately. A full month of abstention meant that the impact was so much stronger. He felt the effect of the absinthe rush through his body, licking every nerve and sending it tingling with awareness. All of a sudden, he wanted the entire bottle, and his hand shook with the urge to bring the lip of the bottle directly to his mouth.

The only thing stopping him was the woman standing in front of him and centuries of Malfoy pride running through his veins. Not for anything would he have shown his tremor and need just then.

“I’m sorry, I should have owled first.” Her tone was short and brusque, and her voice echoed in the empty hall. 

“Well, to what do I owe the profound honour of having Hermione Granger back in my home?”  Instead of taking another sip, he swirled the liquid in the glass, as though he had all the time in the world to stand in the entrance hall and chat about nonsensical things.

She determinedly averted her gaze from his drink. “Look, can we—talk?”

He lifted his brows in an insouciant gesture, as though to say that it didn’t matter very much one way or another, and took one step backwards into the library. He kept his eyes on her as she took a deep breath and walked past him, tucking her hair behind her ears as though readying herself for a major battle. Glass crunched audibly under her shoes, and she paused, taking a concerned look downward, dancing back a step when she saw the pieces of glass strewn on the rug, with liquid darkening the fabric. 

She’d obviously gone home and changed, and now she was as covered up as she had been bare an hour ago, with only her ankles showing. Her hair was wild and frizzy around her face, escaping the confines she’d attempted to create for it; at the very least she’d not sat around to fix herself up before coming here. She looked as though she’d been settling in for the evening before deciding to get up and torture Draco Malfoy a bit longer.

He grew angrier as he realised he was  _ cataloguing  _ her appearance as a way of gauging what was about to occur, when he’d only just decided to wash his hands of her.

Those eyes of hers missed nothing and certainly not the way his eyebrows drew together. She swallowed once and took a deep breath. Her chest rose and fell. “I came to apologise.” There was still barely an inflection in her stiff tone. “I—jumped to conclusions.”

“Did you?” he asked, pointedly lifting the glass to his lips again before pausing. “Oh, pardon me. Did you want a drink?”

His entire body was burning with awareness. Images of the evening only an hour ago filled his mind. Memories of skin rubbing on skin, of hot panting breaths brushing over ears, of the taste of her lips on his—

Her eyes flickered over his face and then over his shoulder, as though evaluating what had happened in between their bout at the ring and here. “You’re drunk.” Her voice remained neutral, but he got the oddest feeling that she was ever so slightly disappointed.

What the bloody fuck did  _ she _ have to be disappointed about?  He’d had one  _ bloody _ sip, and in any event, he could control his alcohol. His lips twisted into a sneer. “Not yet, but I do plan on it. Are you going to join me or do you just want to stare disapprovingly at me while I get pissed?”

Her eyes flickered at his tone. “Maybe I should come back later. This is clearly not a good time.” Her hand twitched at her side, as though she were on the verge of Apparating out.

“It’s the best of times.” Draco’s hand tightened on the glass. Despite his outward indifference to her presence here, he didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her to stand there all night and snipe at him because it’d mean she wasn’t elsewhere, doing  _ other  _ things with  _ other  _ people. “Given I’ve just started.”

Hermione sniffed the air. “Right and—” Her eyes sharpened. “What am I seeing—” she broke off and gazed around the room as though she had seen an apparition. “What else is in this room? What  _ is _ this?”

_ “Praeteriens,” _ he said, “is that delicious smell in the air. What do you see, Granger? Moments of bliss in your redhead’s arms?”

She acted like she hadn’t heard him and looked around the library warily, her gaze pausing again on the broken glass around her feet. He could see a multitude of expressions flash across her face: concern, disappointment. She frowned as she took another cautious sniff. 

He tried to control his emotions in the wake of her obvious disapproval and spoke to her profile, languidly waving his drink at her. “Well, I can't be buggered to find another glass for you, so have that one, and I'll take the bottle."

“I don’t need anything, thank you—"

"Of course you do," he said, waving the bottle in a shushing gesture at her. "There, that one’s yours." He pushed the glass at her. She grasped it belatedly, and half its contents sloshed over both of their hands.

He waved off the spill, sauntering over to lean a hip against the desk. "There's more where that came from."

She glanced down at the glass in her hand and pursed her lips before looking up again. There was a determined expression on her face that he associated with how she looked right before she walked on stage to make a speech. "Look, Draco. I’m—” She shifted her weight onto her other leg and started again. "I don't even know why exactly I jumped to conclusions like that. I wasn't thinking—or rather, perhaps I was overthinking, and—and just coming up with the worst possible scenario." She gestured wildly with her hands and grimaced when the liquid sloshed over the rim of the glass again. "You can understand—can’t you?”

Perhaps her beseeching tone of voice and the hesitant way she gazed up at him were meant to be conciliatory, but her words were almost incendiary in their nature. “Understand that you thought the worst of me? Well, yes, I can understand that. Because you do, of course.”

Her mouth opened and closed without a sound emerging. “No! I don’t!” Her hand came up to gesticulate widely. She wasn't looking at him when she spoke, her eyes were slanted to the side, and her wild movements made the absinthe in her glass slosh over the sides. She grimaced before taking a giant step forward to place it on the desk and frowned again at her fingers, which must have been sticky. 

He’d been standing at a distance, watching her flounder through her shit apology and trying, not very well, to twirl the bottle on the table. When she passed within an arm’s length, he glanced up at her with heated eyes. He could feel all of his self-control melting with her proximity.  He was sadly out of practice at holding his drink; that one sip was hitting him harder than it should. 

She was still explaining why she thought so lowly of him. “I couldn’t help it. It’s like—we have all this history together, and when things go wrong, I can’t help but think that maybe I was…” she trailed off as he started to advance on her. “Maybe I…”

He wasn’t thinking, a part of him thought as he gently touched the side of her cheek with his knuckles, the bottle neck still loosely grasped in his other hand hanging at his side. Soft. So soft. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing now.  If he were smarter, he wouldn’t be approaching her like this, with him almost out of his mind with need of her or the alcohol so tantalisingly near, and the smell of hallucinogens permeating the library. If he were more controlled, he’d stay away from her until he could figure out where he’d bollocksed things up. 

Because that one small part of him deep down inside still thought he stood a chance with her. That he could still recoup his devastating losses and start over. That he could have her, even if it were platonically and in increments.

He could be happy with that, couldn’t he?

Her breath seemed to hitch in her chest, and her eyelids fluttered closed as his hand drifted across her skin. That action sent the hope spiraling through his body like wildfire. Her lips—those perfect, plump lips that he’d kissed all too briefly—were partly open, like a silent invitation for more. He’d craved her for so long that now she was here of her own accord, it seemed second nature to simply bend down and capture that bold, pouty mouth with his own, to trace the seam of her lips with his tongue, and to dip it tentatively past her teeth to gauge her reaction.

When she released a shuddering sigh into his mouth, his hand came to wrap around the base of her neck. He deepened the kiss, suckling at her mouth as though it were a potion he needed to survive. 

There was a muffled sound as the bottle dropped from his hand onto the carpet with a dull thud, and his other hand came up to cup her face. She was here, in his house, in his arms. Her mouth and body were soft and yielding to him, and he almost couldn't believe this was happening, when earlier in the week he'd been about to give himself a pity party and burn down another wing just for the hell of it. Now she was here and warm and real; she was reciprocating, and he was lost.

He didn’t need alcohol when he had her; he was intoxicated by every aspect of her, addicted to her presence, to her very breath.

He slanted his mouth over hers, his breathing coming in much too fast. His hands were searching for the opening to her shirt, but it seemed to be seamless. He couldn’t imagine what the Muggles had been thinking, to invent such a restrictive yet form-fitting garment, but at least it ended at the waist, and his hand quickly found its way underneath it and touched the bare skin of her torso. She made a breathy sound like a muffled giggle and the sound elated him, excited him, sent the blood rushing straight to his head so quickly that his mind blanked. "Hermione," he whispered against her mouth, dancing her around in an uneven waltzing motion and walking her backwards towards the desk.

Some part of his fuzzy brain could still configure things, or perhaps he’d spent an eternity doing such calculations that they were simply ingrained in him by now. He could tell, for example, that she was on her tiptoes, which meant she was willing, for whatever reason. He should have been furious with her; there were some very good reasons that he’d set out to get roaring drunk. She thought he was a piss-poor rendition of a human being; she was very possibly fucking Weasley—and that should have sent him rearing off her body and Scourgifying himself. Yet all he wanted to do was bury himself in her so hard and so thoroughly that he’d erase every last memory of that git from her mind.

To that end, he bent slightly at the knees, without breaking contact with her lips, gripped both of her luscious buttocks, and hoisted her up onto the desk. She gasped against his mouth and broke off at the motion. “Oh, but you’re drunk,” she said before he kissed the corner of her lips, her chin, her cheek, and everywhere he could reach. Her voice sounded regretful, a token protest even as her hands clasped him closer instead of pushing him away. Her legs dangled on either side of his thighs as her fingers caressed his face. “Oh, why do you have to be drunk whenever you come onto me—”

A clank. She jerked, head swiveling to the side at the sound. "Oh I'm so sorry. I've knocked over the—"

Without lifting his lips from her skin, he opened an eye a slit to see the wineglass on its side,  green  liquid spilling over and covering the leather desk pad. "I don't give a fuck," he started to say, leaning over her, his lips pressing urgent kisses on the line of her slender neck. His hands had her shirt rucked up high on her back, and he’d just realised that it was surprisingly stretchy. With any luck, he could pull it right off her...

Her hands were doing a poor job of fending him off. "But your desk! And your papers—"

His mouth continued to kiss the rim of her ear, the line of her jaw, that tantalising soft spot under her chin. A score of smooth, honeyed skin awaited him, and there would be no fighting for it. It was his for the taking. After so long debating with himself, he couldn’t believe it’d be so easy. Her body was so warm and inviting that he was heady with it. Whoever complained of whiskeydisk had never gone months of this tantalising tease. He was near to bursting already, and she had barely laid a hand on him.

Finally, he had the shirt completely off and over her head. Underneath, she was wearing a black brassiere designed much like her swimwear—something that was completely unlike the corseting that most Pureblood girls wore. It, too, was stretchy, and he pulled ineffectively at it for a moment before he simply pulled the straps down off her shoulders and stared at her exposed chest for a moment in silence. His right hand came up the side of her torso to cup her breast. If it were slightly atremble, no one besides the two of them would ever know. He had waited for this moment for so fucking long, and it almost seemed like a dream that she was in front of him like this, unmasked, spread open; willingly kissing him. 

His thumbs brushed the full underside of her breast, his fingers wrapped around her ribcage. She moaned his name, sending a bolt of sensation right up his cock. He watched her face with hooded eyes as he circled her nipples with his thumbs, noting with triumph as her eyelids fluttered shut. He dipped his head in and dropped a kiss on her unmoving lips before roving lower, a kiss dropped on her clavicle, another on top of her pert, proud breast. Then he was sucking on her, his thumbs digging into her ribcage, and he almost came in his pants when she shuddered and her pebbled nipple jostled in against his tongue. 

She was panting as she leaned back over the desktop. In another moment, she’d be lying down in a sea of absinthe, and wasn’t that an intoxicating mixture? Granger and alcohol—he might never again recover from the addiction; his heart might simply give up, but wouldn’t that be a way to go?

Her thighs came to wrap around his waist, and she was pressing herself against him. “Draco,” she said, and the name sounded so unbearably sweet above his head that he had to stop and adjust himself. Why hadn’t he rubbed one out before she came? Between the feel of her in his arms and what had happened in the ring earlier, his cock was rampant and harder than stone. He felt ready to burst.

He pressed her further down onto the desk, and she grimaced as her elbow and forearm dipped into the spill. She pushed slightly at his chest and made to sit up. “Draco, wait. Let’s just—hold on. This is really very sticky.” She was laughing slightly, and her head ducked his overtures as she searched for a place to set down her hand. 

There was nothing more urgent on his mind than Apparating her to his bedroom right at that moment, but he forced himself to slow down and undress her properly, and  _ coax _ her a bit. He was so intent on his task that he didn't even notice when she froze. In the next moment, he grunted as her hand slapped him in the chest, but he gripped her fingers and continued to tongue her nipple as his other hand attempted to pull off her trousers by forceful tugging.

The humour in her voice had disappeared completely. “What is this?” she asked, her tone sharp. The heel of her hand was firmly lodged against his sternum as he tried to swoop in for another kiss.

He finally opened his eyes and saw the pictures in her hand. He blinked as they came into focus gradually.

For a moment, his eyes still swam with the unbelievably sensuous image of her, half-dressed atop his father’s work desk. Her brassiere was hanging loosely around her waist, one strap hanging off her shoulder, her other arm worked free of it altogether. Her breasts were proud and exposed at his eye level, one nipple rosy and wet from his mouth.

She looked dishevelled from just a few kisses, and it made him want to rumple her up more. To make her eyes go heavy-lidded and her knees shaky with lust. Perhaps that was always the effect her messy hair had on him. It always made him think of rumpled sheets and red-kissed skin and hot tussling in the bedroom. He was having a hard time registering her words. 

Seeing her like this, with his hands on her bare skin, her legs wrapped around his waist, was exhilarating. The fact that she was staring down at their naughty pictures nearly sent him into a frenzy.

He couldn’t help but stand up to capture her mouth in another consuming kiss, one that ended with her almost completely lying back on the desktop. When he stopped for breath, she pushed his head away with a hand under his chin. “Draco!” she said, and the sharp edge of her tone jerked him out of his reverie. “Let me up.”

"How can someone so fit be such a mood-killer?” he asked, but he let her sit up while his hand continued to delve into her trousers.

“Stop—stop undressing me! Why do you have these pictures? Does everyone get pictures?”

“Funny story,” he murmured. He made another valiant effort to pull the jeans off her hips and succeeded only in pulling her down further off the desk until she was straddling him, while he was standing up. Fully clothed, he pushed against her and felt rather than heard her grunt as her core made contact against the front of his trousers. “I was really very, very angry with you, and so—”

She made a sound that was halfway between a disbelieving laugh and a low whimper as he pushed the hard ridge of his erection against her. “Why were  _ you _ angry? Was it just because I accused you? But—” she paused, her hand still braced up against his chest as she thought. “You didn’t know until we saw each other, and then—you’d arrived angry.” Her head was tilted questioningly at him, her eyes flickering around as though she were replaying the events of that evening in her head.

He gripped her buttocks with his hands, latching onto the pockets in the rear. He dropped his head into her stomach. “Right. I was angry. I planned on sending them in to the  _ Prophet  _ and having you thoroughly unmasked.” When there was a silence above him, he opened his eyes and saw that there was a button right at the front centre of her trousers, and he worked it open.

The button had just popped free when she elbowed him in the stomach. “Wait a minute. _You?_ _You_ arranged for these photographs to be taken?” 

When he still didn’t react, she shouted his name and kneed him off.

He fell off her and blinked, slow and lizard-like. “Did you—just kick me?” He grabbed her foot in a hard grasp, wrenching off her shoe and throwing it over his shoulder. “That fucking hurt.”

With a muttered sigh, she shook her head and jerked out her wand. In another moment, invisible ropes wound themselves up from the sole of his feet and bound him where he stood. He gazed down at himself, at the hard-on that protruded the front of his trousers like a tent, and licked his lips. “Bloody fuck. Must you always tie me up? Just once, can’t I be the one to do it to you?”

She leapt off the table, the wand still pointed at him. “Talk. Tell me what you were planning. Did you really say the  _ Prophet? _ You were going to send these to the  _ Prophet?” _ Her voice rose at the end of her sentence in a note of hysteria.

“Right, but I changed my mind.” His eyes continued to linger on her breasts as they bounced slightly with her movements.

“All because I thought you had broken the pact?”

“Well, not just that,” he said and swallowed through a parched, raw throat. His mouth felt so dry. The sip of it he’d had to spite her was only playing on his need, and all the anger and disappointment he’d started out wanting to drown out tonight were beginning to float back to the surface. “Fuck, now I really need that drink. If you’re not going to untie me, then at least give me one.”

“No! How many did you have before I got here?” She was shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t believe this. I  _ believed _ you when you said you didn’t tell Blaise, and all the while you were planning to send these to the  _ Prophet? _ This—no, you’re  _ unbelievable _ .” Her chin jutted out as she summoned her shirt and began the process of redressing and Scourgifying herself.

He watched with heated eyes as all the skin he’d painstakingly revealed was covered up again. Fuck, now he definitely needed that drink. He growled against the constraints on him. “ _ I’m _ unbelievable? Come now, you definitely believed I was capable of underhandedness, and you came to the ring on your high horse. Haven’t I already said that I didn’t  _ plan _ on using them?” He jerked ineffectively on the bonds. Un-fucking-believable. 

The haze of lust started to dissipate from before his eyes. His lips flattened into a line as he tracked her movements. 

Fully dressed again, she circled him with her wand gesticulating with it under his nose. He warily followed the line of it with his eyes. “I can’t  _ believe _ I was coming to apologise to you. You’re such an unbelievable... _ arse! _ ” She made a sound that was halfway between a snarl and a shout. “I can’t believe I was so wrong about you!”

Draco scoffed. “Who’s wrong about  _ whom  _ here, Granger?” he asked, his voice hard. His attention didn’t move from the tip of her wand, “You clearly think I’m the lowest of the low and have done for the entire time you’ve been pretending otherwise. Speaking of apologies, you haven’t actually said the magic word, have you?” 

Of course he’d been thinking with his cock just now and not his pride. If he had any pride at all, he’d have kicked her out of his house the moment she’d appeared. Instead, he was tied up in his own library. What the bloody fuck.

She paused in the midst of gnashing her teeth to narrow her eyes at him. “Sorry?”

He got angrier the longer she surveyed him, looking holier than thou. Deprivation of her warmth and kisses also made him testy and on edge.  “No, you’re not sorry,” he said, his gaze flicking back down to rest on her breasts, clothed now as they were. She flushed at his pointed gaze, and her hands fluttered defensively for a moment before she dropped them, as if bracing herself from caring about his lewd stares. “You’d only be sorry if you lost out on all that money I’ve committed to contributing towards your causes.  _ Galleons to burn _ , remember?”

“What?” Her head was tilted to the side, her eyes flashing at the pointedness in his words.

“Isn’t that what it’s all been about?” he asked, rocking back on his heels as much the ropes allowed.  His heart was thudding with the realisation now that she was completely covered up again.  “Isn’t this the reason you’re here? To sweeten me up so that I’d continue to fucking put out for your little causes?” His lips were curled back on his teeth in an ugly sneer. “After all, even if I did renege on our bargain, it’s only Blaise that would know, and you’d have seen to it that my cock wouldn’t be fun for me anymore.”

“ _ What _ the  _ hell  _ are you even talking about?” She looked so angry that he was sure at any moment she would slap him across the face. He was half looking forward to it, truth be told. “Don’t you  _ dare _ turn this on me! You were planning—how long have you been planning this, Malfoy? The better part of the summer? Has  _ this  _ been what it’s all about? You, trying to destroy my reputation and humiliate me in front of the entire wizarding population?” In that moment, her eyes reflected something other than anger, as if being wrong about him was a betrayal just as strong as the emotions that’d caused him to fly off the rails during the past week. 

As if he had the ability to wound her. Tough, unyielding Granger. Ruthless to the core. Who’d led him on with smiles and flowering charms and made him think that all things were possible. Who’d turned around and said behind his back that he was nothing but a Death Eater.

“Don’t turn this back on me, you cold-hearted bitch.” He no longer cared that calling names would probably result in him being hexed off his feet. “You know full well what you said. I’m nothing but a fucking purse to you, aren’t I? You’re just using me, after all.”

“ _ You _ called me a  _ Mudblood _ , Malfoy, and I  _ still _ came to apologise to you.” Her eyes flashed with something indefinable that made him feel vaguely uncomfortable and guilty.

He dropped his gaze. “Admit it, Granger. Do it. Admit you were just using me this entire time. For the love of God.”  _ Please just tell me the truth and put me out of my misery. _

There was something pleading in his tone that somehow was completely out of his control. He swallowed hard and wished he hadn’t said anything, hadn’t managed to sound so distinctly dickless and  _ begging. _ Underneath all that was the heady pull of hope that refused to die as long as she never said the words out loud.

“I—” She blinked and paused, clearly taken aback by the desperation in his voice. The wand wavered in her hand before she lowered it. “I never said that you were just a purse to me. I wasn’t just using you.”

“Not to my face.” An ugly sound came out of his mouth, halfway between a derisive snort and a humourless laugh. “But you definitely said it.”

"When?” Her demand was urgent, and the wand was back under his nose again. “When did I say that?”

His stomach was curdling with the memory of those words, so hurtful he hadn’t been able to even speak them aloud and throw them back in her face. Even thinking of that conversation dried up his mouth and stuck his tongue to the roof of his mouth. 

Instead he sneered at her, at her wand, at the self-righteous expression on her face; the one that told him she was going to deny everything to the end. He simply looked away from her and raised his voice. “ _ Pinny!” _ he called.

Not a second later, the house elf appeared at his side. “Master Draco sir?”

“Loosen these bonds, if you please.” Draco didn’t take his eyes off Hermione. 

At the appearance of the house elf, her wand lowered, and she stepped back. She didn’t interfere as Pinny released Draco from his bonds, nor move a centimetre as he rubbed his arms where the ropes had bit into his skin. She stood silently as Draco dismissed the house elf and took out his own wand before lazily reaching down to adjust himself, uncaring that she blushed in reaction. 

She continued to stand her ground until after they were alone again. “I don’t know where you’re getting your facts, but they’re wrong. The reason I even  _ went _ back to the ring was to find you. You haven’t responded to any of my Firecalls or my owls for almost a week, remember?  _ You _ were the one who was angry from the moment you saw me, for whatever reason you’d cooked up in your head! I just wanted to tell you that I’d put a codicil on our original agreement and to make sure that you’d be careful—and you hadn’t even remembered it, had you! Because you were drunk off your feet that day at the Charity auction.”

His heart sank. So many bad impressions in all the time he’d known her. When would he ever do anything right? Defensiveness made him lash out.  “That’s right, Granger. Drunk off my feet. Dosed up the nines. But you knew all that, didn’t you? That’s when you decided to take me for all you could get. Weasley was right. You  _ are _ a fucking whore.”

She slapped him then. A ringing smack of an open palm against his jaw that came so suddenly out of the blue he didn’t have time to react until it was over. He sprang into action instinctively and grabbed her around her shoulders. 

This time when he kissed her, it was a hard, punishing kiss with nothing of the softness and yearning of a few moments ago. A few minutes and yet a lifetime seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. She struggled under his embrace before he threw her off, insultingly, as though he were contaminated by her touch. “I think I deserved that, don’t you? It’s the very least you could do,” he said with his most disdainful sneer. “After all, I paid for it, didn’t I?”

She scrubbed the back of her hand over her mouth, looking angry enough to spit. “You are such a complete shit, Malfoy. For the record, if you wanted to  _ pay  _ for sex, I could have told you where to take your blasted money. I can’t—" she threw up her hands. “I can’t believe I honestly started to care about you. Just forget it.”

“Cared about me?” He was certain he had a disbelieving sneer on his face. She couldn’t even say anything more serious than  _ care. _ She  _ cared _ about him like he was one of her bloody charity cases. Because of course he was too much of a fuck-up for her to want anything more from. He didn’t think he could feel worse. She was doling out attention like she was a fucking queen giving alms and he was supposed to lap it up and beg for more. “Like you care about your other wild animals?”

He stalked closer to her, and whether it was out of pride or misguided bravery, she stood her ground and jerked up her chin to stare right back at him. He lowered his voice. “Were those kisses an example of your indiscriminate  _ caring? _ ” He grabbed her around the shoulders so hard his fingers were digging into her skin, but she never flinched. “Then how much would it cost me for a good, solid  _ fuck? _ ”

“Go fuck yourself, Malfoy.”

“That much?” He laughed, a raspy, unamused sound. “It’s too bad you couldn’t put on a better act,  _ Hermione. _ You could have had the entire Malfoy fortune at your disposal. Lock, stock, and barrel.”

She struggled free of his grasp, and just before she raised her wand, no doubt to resort to violence, he let her go with a little shove. “It wasn’t a fucking  _ act!” _ She sounded incensed.

He’d turned his back on her; turned his attention back to his desk. With another swish of his wand, he set the photographs on fire. She flinched as the sheafs of moving pictures went up in a sheet of flame, aided by the spilt alcohol. “Malfoy!” she screamed, as the fire began to lick a path off the table. In another second, it’d burnt a track across the table and down the side, to travel rapidly across the rug. He was powerless to move, his mind a complete blank.

The fire licked its way over to the sprinkle of broken glass. In slow motion, the fire ate up the  _ Praeteriens _ and abruptly changed colour, turning a bright purplish-blue tint before roaring up into a giant bouquet of live sparks, like a horrific display of fireworks.

_ “Extingio!”  _

From behind him, he heard Hermione shout the incantation just before the separate tendrils of fire had a chance to fall. All at once, the fire shrank into itself with a force that caused all the curtains in the room to be sucked towards the origin of the fire. His clothes pressed hard against his body, his fringe blew across his forehead, and his lashes fluttered closed against the gale. When he opened his eyes again, the fire was gone. Several loose pieces of parchment floated slowly in the dying breeze of the extinguishing charm.

There was a pressure on his arm. Hermione, gripping his sleeve and breathing hard. “Do you—do you have a  _ death wish _ , Malfoy? You nearly—you nearly set fire to your library. Your  _ library, _ Draco.”

He emitted a short, humourless laugh. Of course she’d care about books more than him.

She dropped her hand. “You’d have been burned alive in here,” she said. She shook her head and lifted a hand to palm her forehead. “Look, I don’t know why you’re acting like this. It’s—withdrawal or something. My coming here was clearly a bad idea. I’m sorry I put a hex on our original deal, but in my defense, I didn’t trust you then. I thought you were going to blackmail me—it would be consistent with how you bullied in school. And you’ve basically just proved me right.” Her lips were pulled down at the ends, as though she weren’t sure exactly what to believe anymore. 

He knew the feeling intensely.

And yet she still didn’t leave. She stared at him for a long moment as though she were trying to fathom him out. “Draco,” she said slowly, drawing out the syllables as though she wanted him to understand whatever explanation she planned on giving him; as though it were important to her.

“I only thought you told Blaise when you were drunk.  _ You _ planned on exposing me in front of  _ everyone _ . How—how does anyone come back from that? What do you expect me to do here?” She didn’t look angry so much as shell-shocked now, throwing up her hands and shaking them emphatically at him. “It’s so far beyond the realm of decency that I can’t even—I honestly don’t even know who you are or what to believe.”

He should defend himself, sneer, rebut her—but all he felt was his heart thudding out of his chest.

“I can’t work you out. You blow hot and cold like no one else I know. The only time you salivate over me is when you’re drunk off your feet, and the other times you’re making jokes about Mudbloods with Blaise in a way that makes me reevaluate every single conversation I’ve ever had with you.” She huffed out a sigh. “I can’t handle you when you’re like this. Not anymore. Just—I’ve got to go.” She shook her head again, wearily, and began to head out of the library.

“I heard you,” he said abruptly to her back. His words sounded so short that they seemed to bounce off the walls of the library. “I heard what you said to Weasley that day when you left the Manor. You said you were just using me. That I was—” he broke off, unable to repeat the words that had replayed itself on a loop in his head whenever he stopped thinking about revenge. 

_ He’s nothing to me. _

_ I’m just using him. _

_ He’s a Death Eater and a Slytherin. _

_ I know. I remember. I promise I won’t forget that. _

The words that Weasley had said had been unsavoury to overhear, but they were nothing compared to the things that had come from Hermione. They were still so painful that talking about it made him instantly regret opening his mouth. The moment the words had left his lips, he immediately wished for an Obliviate to strike down the both of them.

Instead, as though a dam had finally been breached, his mouth continued to work on its own. “That I’m nothing but a Death Eater,” he finished with the most gruesome sneer he could conjure up to cover up the loud thudding in his ears. “Remember that?” He bared his teeth.

She’d whirled around. Her eyes were so large and round he swore he could see his reflection in them, even from such a distance. She looked stricken and horrified. “You heard that?” she whispered, her words falling into the silence like little pebbles into water. Amid the guilt and shame on her face, there was a sudden regretful realisation.

He didn’t say anything else. He couldn’t.

“You weren’t supposed to—” Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she tried to search for the right words. “You weren’t meant to hear that.”

“Clearly.”

She raised a hand out to him, palm-up. “No. No, that’s not what I meant.” She retraced her steps back into the room and towards him. “I’m sorry you heard that, Draco. Ron isn’t always— _ rational _ when it comes to what happened back then. What happened with Fred—and then the business. He goes a bit crazy when he talks about it, you know?” She gave a small laugh that sounded rather like a sob. “It was one of the reasons we couldn’t be together. Both of us were just so angry, all the time. Arguing and finding people to blame.”

“And I was the convenient scapegoat to bring the happy couple together,” he said. His teeth would be ground to nothing by the end of the night. Hearing her talk about the past and the what-would-have-beens especially with Ronald Weasley, who’d done his ultimate best to smear Draco’s name before coming onto Hermione, was hardly a sufficient apology.

_ Begging _ might be a sufficient reinstatement.

As if that would ever happen from her.

“We’re not a couple,” she said. “Not even close.”

Jealousy speared him. “But he wants to be. He wants you back.”

She shook her head. “He wants the Hermione who didn’t fight in a war and who didn’t lose her parents. He wants someone who’ll cry on his shoulder so that he doesn’t feel as damaged.”  She inhaled slowly through her teeth. “And that’s just not me anymore. I can’t keep crying and crying and crying for things that are dead and buried and in the past. I don’t  _ want  _ to. I’m  _ angry _ , not sad, you know? I  _ like _ being angry, because--because--” She shook her head, for the moment looking rather as though she were on the verge of contradicting herself by bursting into tears. Somehow she overcame that with a deep breath, though there was an audible hitch in her voice. “Because then I’m not a victim.”

Her voice was softer and calmer now. There was a monumental silence before she stepped into the distance between them and put a hand on his arm. “I said those things because it was a way of placating Ron, to calm him down. I’ve found that sometimes agreeing with him is the best thing to do when he gets in a state. But I didn’t believe those things. I don’t actually  _ think _ them.” 

It could be another lie, but Draco found himself believing her.  Her eyes were completely dry, as though a well of emotion had been ruthlessly contained and funneled into something she could use to strike out at someone. If she’d once been the sort of cry over her friends, she was no longer that person. There was only the faintest undertone of sadness, as though for a childhood friendship that was no longer what it used to be.

He believed her, and yet he couldn’t help but ask for confirmation: “Don’t you?”

“Not anymore,” she said before taking in a ragged breath. “We’re all damaged from the war, Draco. I cared about you. I  _ do _ still care about you.  God, I can’t believe I’m saying this after what you did or are still going to do.” She laughed, but the sound was mirthless. “Look, I have problems of my own, you know? I thought I could help you, but you’re…” She made a general gesture with her hand that could have been meant to indicate him, the library that still smelled vaguely like smoke and ash, the Manor, or the world at large. 

“Fucked up?” His lips twisted like he’d made a joke. Maybe the joke was that it wasn’t a joke at all.

Her laugh sounded even more serrated this time. “More or less.”

_ Hot and cold. _

_ I honestly started to care about you. _

_ I cared about you. _

_ I do still care about you. _

He took a step closer to her. “You cared about me. Like you do your pathetic little causes? Your fucked-up animals?”

She didn’t respond.

“Can’t you even use the word  _ like _ , Granger? What the bloody fuck is up with that paltry word? You care about me. Care enough that you want to be with me?” His voice sounded more guttural than he’d have liked.

She blew out a breath of air through her mouth and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She looked extraordinarily tired. “ _ Be _ with you? I  _ have _ been with you. I’ve spent this summer with you, Draco, haven’t you noticed? And you—sometimes I can’t work out if you hate me or yourself. Or maybe both. And it’s too exhausting, alright? This—” she gestured wildly at the singed desk and smoking rug "—is not healthy behaviour!” 

“Prove it,” he said, ignoring everything else she’d said. “You really want to be with me? Then don’t go.” He hadn't meant to say those words, not in that half-pleading way, not with his inhibitions down, not while he was currently completely unable to occlude his emotions. “Stay with me.”

Not while all his feelings might be written across his face at that exact moment.

She didn't move as he half-feared she would; didn't take another step out of the library and out of his life.

So he walked forward, through a crackly, soggy mess that was undoubtedly the charred bits of loose thread from the priceless rug, crunching through shards of broken glass that were the result of his unbridled fury earlier that evening. He didn't look anywhere but straight at her, at this woman who had taken over his life so completely that he couldn't see where his heart began and meaning ended.

"We have a deal, remember?" he said, and his voice was soft and coaxing as though he was speaking to a wild animal one wanted to bring back home. She didn't move as he slowly advanced on her. "One night. That's all I ask."  A thought—a desperate thought—began to formulate in his foggy brain, that if the so-called favour was the only way he could have her, he’d take what he could get.

At the very least, it’d be a semblance of consent.

She laughed then, helplessly, but it was directed to the ceiling. "You must be drunk. You can’t be serious."

_ "In vino veritas,"  _ he said, almost ruefully. He was close enough to touch her. He picked up her hand and she let him. "I want you so desperately I don't know where to go from here. There's not a part of me that doesn't think about you night and day." 

Her head began to move from side to side—she was shaking her head. A rejection. His heart began to sink. 

Her words tumbled out in a rush. "You never said. Not once. You've never even touched me in these past few weeks. You flinch away from me whenever I touch your arm.  You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to flip around on a knut and string me along and then call me names."

He looked down at where their hands were joined, her smaller fingers twitching in his grasp. He'd never realised that’d been how it’d appeared to her. He'd rejected dancing with her at the Remembrance Ball because the temptation of holding her so closely but not having her was too difficult. In his resolution to be good and proper, the perfect gentleman, he'd stepped away from her any time she came too close. He'd been afraid that his self-control was too weak, that he'd leap on her in a moment of madness and scare her off forever. Sober, he was a mass of rigid nerves, and he'd never noticed any of her signals, welcoming or otherwise. On top of that,  occlumency had a way of making a person socially inept.

He wasn't completely sober now,  and he didn’t let go of her hand. 

Her fingers twitched. “You’re a fucking idiot if this is what you’re asking for.  This is the worst possible choice, you know? The _ worst possible deal _ you could make with my favour."  She made a sound that was between a disbelieving groan and an unamused laugh. “With the way you’re going, you’re bound to need the favour in the future.”

What she was saying made sense, in a nebulous, far-off way, but more importantly, what she wasn't saying was for him to  _ fuck off.  _ Her hand was still in his, twitchy as it was. She wasn't saying no, even though her feet were pointed towards the doors.  Her jaw was clenched, and she looked angry with his request, like she was about to slap him again. She shook her head, half to herself, and her expression was the same one as when they’d faced off in that restaurant so very long ago, a challenging, disbelieving look wrinkling her brow.

"I want you so badly I can't think straight," he said, pitching his confession so low that she had to crane her head to hear him. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather have for my favour. I’m calling it in.”

As soon as he’d uttered his last words, he felt a tingle of magic itch along his spine and shiver down his left arm. A warmth began to pulse around his wrist,  and he suddenly remembered that night when they’d made the vow. It was a less extreme version of the Unforgettable Charm and bore with it whatever give and take each desired, with no bonder to bear witness. The memory of holding each other’s hand and staring straight into one another’s eyes with no one around to hear them was suddenly startlingly vivid in his mind. 

He’d been drunk that night too.

But none of any of this would have happened if he hadn’t been.

She’d stopped glaring at him to gaze down at her wrist, and he knew she was feeling the tingle of magic there too, compelling her to come to his aid as requested. Except she was already here, her hand tight in his.

Her throat bobbed, and her eyes were still filled with an irritated ire and a little tinge of bitterness, as if she were thoroughly disappointed with him. She muttered something under her breath, and he only caught the motion of her lips forming the words, “Fuck it.”

When he leaned down to kiss her, she didn't giggle, or protest, or incline her body away. She arched forward towards him, rising on her tiptoes to meet his lips. 

They angled their mouths over one another, hot breaths intermingling with one another. Whatever her compliance meant, whether it was only for the one night or not, it no longer mattered. He'd wanted her for so long that he no longer cared what could happen on the morrow. He'd tie her to him, tether them together so she could never leave. For now, though, her breasts were pressed up against his chest and she wasn't twisting away. Her hands were fumbling at his waistband and pulling out his shirt ends. He groaned when her small, slim fingers slipped under his shirt and brushed over his hips and his ribs; danced up his spine.

He pulled her up onto her toes, supporting her weight fully with his arms around her waist. 

Then he took a step back and spun on his heels, taking her hand in his and leading her out of the library

If he only had this one chance to be with her, he wanted to do it properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much love to disenchantedglow, kahcicamera, and lunamionny, who all served in varying degrees as betas and alphas to help me work out Draco's redemption, such as it is.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nemesis and lover—sometimes they meant exactly the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS. It's finally finished! I can't believe it! It's completely due to the HUGE alpha help rendered me by kahcicamera, lunamionny, and disenchantedglow, along with their betawork, and I'm so indebted to them it's not even funny.
> 
> It's also due to all the readers and reviewers who stayed with me, risking disappointment of another unfinished WIP. I KNOW YO I KNOW and I thank you so much for taking the chance on me. Thank you so, so much.

**Chapter 20**

  
  


They landed in his bedchamber, the room in the North Wing that he'd designated for himself when he'd returned to the Manor.

The moment Hermione materialised with a stumble, she turned in his arms and shoved ineffectually at his shoulders. “Oh, I’m going to be sick.” Though her lips were still red and swollen from their kissing, all the lust seemed to have disappeared from her face, and she looked distinctly ill for a moment. 

When his hands remained clasped around her waist, she stumbled out of his embrace and puffed out several breaths with her mouth. “Side-Along Apparition always makes me ill.”

Draco knew there was a possibility of it, especially when she hated flying so much, but he’d deemed it worth the risk. His hand flexed helplessly at his side as he watched her take several laboured breaths as she paced, her palm pressed to her stomach. He’d never been any use at comforting others, even when it was his mother, but watching her look so uncomfortable made him take a step forward and rub her back in slow circles. 

She finally nodded to signal that the wave of nausea had passed. He kept his hand on her back as she gazed up at him through narrowed eyes. “I’m still mad at you, you know? After all we’ve been through, were you seriously trying to coerce me into having sex with you like this?”

He didn’t lift his hand from her back, but his throat was suddenly bone-dry at her tone, and he was at a complete loss for words. All he knew was that he never knew where exactly he stood with this woman, and somehow it’d become the most important thing in the world to him. Maybe it was the fact that she never let him get away with a single thing, not like how his mother and scores of other women would. He was on uncharted territory no matter what subject he broached with her, and wasn’t that sort of living on the edge?

“Not coerce,” he corrected. “Persuade.” Semantics, he knew, but he gave her a lopsided smile to offset the snark.

There must have been something she liked in his smile, because she returned it for a moment before she reached for his hand and tugged him towards her. His heart skipped a beat as he followed her to sit on the closest horizontal surface. His breath was close to stuttering in his chest at the sight of her finally on his bed, and he felt as nervous as the first time he’d ever kissed a girl in his life.

Hermione’s attention wasn’t on him. She was staring all around her with wide eyes. “Do you—is this really your room?”

He hummed out his assent, tightly clasping the hand still in his, staring down at her fingers.

“You sleep in a cage. Surrounded by gargoyles.” She tried to pull her hand out so she could swivel around to look at the canopy, but he kept a tighter grip on her.

Draco gazed around the room, trying to see the decor through her eyes. The bed stood in a cold room in a cold wing. The only benefit to this chamber was that it’d been completely empty during the days that the Dark Lord had been in residence. Arranged sparsely around them were a majority of older furniture that had been stowed away in storage after a fire ravaged part of the Manor in the 1800s. Most of the items were heavy Jacobean oak pieces that most Malfoy matrons tended to despise as too dark and heavy, but they had the unexpected perk of being nearly impervious to destructive hexes.

He shrugged. “They’re antiques.” He’d grown up with such monstrosities in the shut-up rooms that he didn’t find them anything but commonplace, though he supposed that the bed, even painted an innocuous ash, was an intimidating piece with the mattress almost a metre off the ground. The four posters holding up the canopy were solid oak and could—and  _ had _ —easily withstood a beater’s bat. There were gargoyles facing outward on each of the four posters. At the foot of the bed as well as the head, the image of a fearsome winged lion’s countenance with a man’s body and a scorpion tail loomed over them.

He’d needed this giant box of a bed frame to ground him, to make him feel safe here again after what’d happened in this place. Not that he could ever say so aloud to anyone. 

If he would tell anyone, though, he thought that Hermione Granger wouldn’t be the worst person in the world. 

“Don’t worry,” he said, gesturing at the image at the head of the bed. “I’ll protect you from Pazuzu.”

“Isn’t Pazuzu a protector from evil spirits?” she asked.

Of course she’d know that. He couldn’t help a small chuckle. 

She giggled in response for a moment, but then she sobered. “We should probably talk.”

His heart seized up at her words. Nothing good ever came of that phrase. Ever. “Must we?” He tried to sound seductive, but he was aware that he just sounded reluctant and annoyed.

She pulled away and aimed a frown at him. “Don’t you think we should? Good chemistry aside, there’s the fact that you eavesdropped on a conversation that was  _ not _ meant for you to hear and you immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion.  _ And _ tried to expose me because you threw a petty fit.”

He swallowed hard. There was an uncomfortably weightless feeling in his stomach that was akin to nausea. “Why talk about unpleasant things when we could be engaging ourselves in  _ great _ chemistry?”

“Draco,” she said, and the sternness in her voice made him sigh. “Honestly, I don’t know what you heard. I don’t want to have to get out a Pensieve either. So just tell me exactly what you  _ thought _ you heard.” When he didn’t immediately respond, she nudged him in the side. “I know it must have been bad. Right?”

He still didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His jaws felt locked together.

She sighed again, and she pulled his hand into her lap, sandwiching it between both of hers. “Ron didn’t deal well with the death of Fred—you know, his brother. In all other aspects, he seems to have completely moved on. But when it comes to the war, and things relating to what happened, he’s not—rational. Two years after the war, I brought up the abhorrent conditions in Azkaban, and he was so angry with me that he didn’t talk to me for three months. That was when I realised that we were just never going to work—that we were seeking salvation from different places.”

He still didn’t like hearing her talk about Ronald Weasley in such a familiar fashion, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been; there was a finality about the way she spoke of their past relationship.

“Sometimes I feel that’s the reason he became an Auror.” She stared sightlessly at something across the room. “If you ever quoted me on this, I’d deny it to my dying day—but sometimes I feel like he was in a position of powerlessness for so long that he enjoys the authority the badge gives him. Not that he abuses his power exactly,” she said hurriedly.

Draco understood that was exactly what she meant, and the fact she had to backtrack on her meaning emphasised it. 

“There are a lot of times that I simply go along with what he says. It’s easier than getting into a fight with him. I did that a lot when I was younger, and it—just wasn’t sustainable.”

She’d been fighting with Ron that first day that he’d bumped into her at the silent auction, now that she mentioned it. She hadn’t argued with Ron then either but had retreated across the room.

“Needless to say, sometimes I just agree with him to end the conversation.” She twisted her head up to look at his profile. “I don’t just think of you as a Death Eater, Draco, and I haven’t for a very long time. I don’t even know if you care—but I need you to know that.”

He did care; more than he knew how to express in words. His throat was completely closed up, and he cleared it a few times before he could trust himself to speak. He was intensely aware of her eyes on him as he said, “Thank you. That means—a lot.” 

It meant even more than what anyone at his trial had said about him, even though that had a far greater bearing on his future.

Although one could say that whatever Hermione thought about him also had great bearing on his future as well.

“You’re not saying anything,” she said. “Normally I can’t get you to shut up.”

He chuckled, but his heart was feeling too full to say anything. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t ever going to be able to use the photographs, Granger.” The words stuttered out of his mouth, surprising even him. “I couldn’t. They’re too personal.” He couldn’t even put into words exactly why they were too personal.

It felt as though he’d be betraying a part of himself by divulging information that wasn’t even his to give for only a few moments of pettiness that probably wouldn’t have given him much satisfaction in the long run. Was this what growing up was like then? Developing a conscience and thinking far ahead into the future? If so, he was finding that it wreaked havoc with everything he’d grown up with, like other aspects of his life she’d had a direct impact.

When he didn’t say anything further, she gazed at him for a moment, and her mouth opened and closed. “And because it would have ruined me, and you wouldn’t have wanted that?” she prompted. 

He shrugged. “Something along those lines, I suppose.” 

The expression on her face was pained, like he’d disappointed her somehow. She sighed and let go of his hands. All of a sudden, the distance between them felt immense, and his stomach churned uncomfortably—as though this distancing was a precursor to her leaving—maybe permanently.

Draco swallowed hard. “I couldn’t do it, Granger,” he said, finally dragging his eyes up to meet hers. “Even if you—even if you don’t feel the same way, I’d never want to hurt you like that. I’ve hurt you enough.” His hands flexed in his lap, but he made no move to reach over to grasp her fingers. “It’s the same reason I would never have told Blaise. You should know that. That he guessed on his own.”

Out of the periphery of his eyes, he saw her shift. Then she reached over and covered his knuckles. “Thank you. That means a lot to me. And just so you know, I think—in some weird, convoluted way, having you in the ring actually helped  _ me. _ It started out as this novelty that gave me a kick—it gave me a chance to escape this built-up image that everyone had of me, and I kept going, but I was always still so angry inside. And then you came along, and—” she twisted up her head to look at him “I’m not going to lie. It felt bloody  _ good _ to knock you on your back. You were something of a symbol to me for such a long time, something I had to overcome. To have  _ you _ be there and know who was beating you was cathartic in a way that nothing else has been. But having you acknowledge that—all the things that happened in the past—makes up for so much more than just what a fist fight could accomplish.” The sigh she emitted then sounded  equal parts relieved and cathartic, as though a load had been lifted from her shoulders. 

Just like that, the tension was back in his shoulders. Was this it, then? The final ‘fuck-off and have a great life’?

"I never thought I’d say this, but it’s somehow extremely  _ freeing _ to be with you. Like, part of the reason I think Ron keeps wanting to get back together is because I never argue with him anymore. But I still  _ think _ it. I just keep it to myself. He just thinks I've suddenly started agreeing with him.” She sounded affectionately exasperated, the way you’d sound with a pet who kept ripping up the house. 

A twinge of jealousy began to work its way through Draco again. She  _ knew _ Weasley wanted to get back together with her, and she never discouraged him.

“Isn’t it weird?” she said softly, in a thoughtful, musing way. Her finger idly traced circles on his forearm. “Isn’t it so weird that out of all the people who’d recognise me, it’d be you?”

“It’s not weird at all,” he said, and in one fluid move, he’d pushed her off his shoulder and she bounced back onto the bed. He pinned her wrists together over her head. “I’d recognise you anywhere.” He punctuated his comment with a lingering kiss at the corner of her mouth. “No matter what kind of mask you wear.” He kissed her on her clavicle.

She gazed up at him with her head slightly tilted in that way he was coming to associate with her now. The look in her eyes was that soft look that he especially liked, the one he fancied was reserved specifically for him. “Maybe so,” she said, half to herself. 

He stroked her hairline with his fingers, taking all of her in, looking his fill on her. He’d never had the chance to be this close to her, with her soft and yielding. He felt like a victor already, without having yet achieved anything. The moment felt so poignant that he had to swallow hard at the rush of emotions flooding through him. “I know it seems like I’ve been thinking with my dick, but it’s not just physical for me. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice every bit as low and intense. “I’m the same.” Then she broke the  moment by gripping the front of his shirt and pulling him down onto her. Their lips met in a scorching kiss, inflaming every single nerve in his body and sending his senses tingling with the awareness of being  _ alive. _ How long had he felt like the living dead, going about his daily routine with no comprehension of just how lifeless he was? How completely inured to the joys of tomorrow. This was what he’d been made for, to be with Hermione Granger. Kissing her like this felt more real to him than anything that had happened in this past year.

It was as though he’d never kissed another person in his life before. All his senses were so finely attuned to her, to her familiar perfume, to the slight but powerful frame within his grasp. She felt simultaneously someone to be reckoned with and someone to protect, like holding a precious magical artifact in one’s hand—so wondrous that you couldn’t help but cup it with both palms, fearful that any sudden movements would cause it to extinguish within your grasp. 

Their mouths slanted over one another deeply, searchingly, in a way that should have had their noses bumping up against each other or had them completely out of breath, and yet they were perfectly in tune. 

Just on the heels of that thought, she wrapped both legs around his waist. He groaned against her mouth and sought to control the drastically rising urge inside him. With how much she’d tortured him in the past months, he’d be lucky if he could last five minutes. 

She pulled up against his body, wrapped an arm across his shoulder, and rolled him over so that she was sitting on top of him. She grinned down at the expression on his face. “Much better.” He groaned as she wriggled her hips, pressing against his erection with the juncture of her thighs.

Her deft hands neatly unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it back from his chest. She leaned over him, her nails scraping up his abdomen as she kissed a line up his sternum. 

“Hermione—stop,” he said. His words sounded embarrassingly like a wheeze. His hands circled her wrists, but she rotated her hands out of his grip. “This is—going to end far too quickly if you keep this up.”

“Good,” she said. Her lips closed over one of his nipples and he almost jackknifed into the air. “I want to drive you as mad as you do me, you poncey prat.”

He gasped under her ministrations, his hands at her waist to lift her off and regain control of the situation. It was like trying to pry a barnacle off a shell. “You already drive me—” he swallowed as her mouth reached his jawline and her tongue dipped into his ear “—quite mad.”

Her hands were now at his waistband, pulling at the fastening. He rocked his erection against her, knowing he should pull back, but unable to stop pulsing into her gyrations. 

She rose up onto her knees to squint down at his trousers. “Purebloods and their buttons. Haven’t you ever heard of a zipper?”

“What?” His question was a gasp of severe agony as her knuckles brushed against the ridge of his outlined member with each button she unfastened. 

“At least you don’t wear underwear,” she said when she undid the last button and pulled apart the placket. She looked up at him with a slow smile before her hand delved into his trousers and closed around his hot cock. 

His head fell back onto the bed. “God save Merlin, I won’t last a minute if you keep doing that.”

She’d already clambered off him and was now eye to eye with his sex. He pulled himself up onto his elbows to watch her as she gently gripped the length with both fists, the glans swollen and leaking precome up and over her hands. 

“I’ve fantasised about this,” she said.

Of course she had. He gave a pained chuckle. She was either his dream woman, or his dream nightmare; completely keen on torturing him, masked or not.  _ She'd  _ fantasised about him? She clearly had no idea how long she'd featured in  _ his  _ dreams. 

With a practised movement, he flipped her onto her back again, clamping her wrists down on top of the bedsheets. "Darling, you have  _ no _ idea." He trailed a line of kisses down her sternum, peering through his fringe to see how she was taking it. Her arms struggled to break free of his grip, but he tightened his grasp and dipped his tongue into her navel. "Let's just say you've featured in my solo performances for far too long for me to want this to end immediately."

Her hands had stopped trying to pull free, and he sat up to pop open the button of her tight blue slacks. He frowned a little when he eased down the placket of her trousers to encounter strange metallic teeth in the opening of her clothes. Then he saw her knickers. Black, silky underthings. His cock twitched against her thigh. God, she was so provocative. Completely dressed like a Muggle on the outside, with no sense of fashion, and on the inside, gorgeously and minimally wrapped.

He looked up from what he was doing to give her a heavy-lidded gaze as he crawled up her body to pull her bra up over her breast and kissed her full on her nipple. He pulled her breast into his mouth again, swirling his tongue over its tip until he heard her inhale sharply. Her hips twitched when his hand delved into her knickers and found her soft, wet heat. "You're the most infuriating woman I know," he said against her cleavage before his mouth turned to lick lave attention on her other breast. His fingers continued to stroke her seam, delighting in how her wetness continued to bloom. Her hips jerked upward, and he shushed her whimpers before he sank a finger into her heat. “Did you know that?”

She was so tight. So incredibly tight. Her walls clenched around his finger, and he marvelled at her muscle control even in her most secret of places. He reared up over her again, and threw one of her thighs over his shoulder, nipping and kissing his way to her crevice. He peered up at her. “I’ve missed the taste of you.”

Her hands dug into his hair and she whimpered, the sound lancing through to his balls. “Why haven’t—why didn’t—”

He flattened his tongue and licked her slowly, reverently, as though she were the last plate of dessert he’d ever get to have. He watched that pink mouth pant for air, and her eyelids flutter, and thought his heart would burst with elation. His fingers dug into her hips as she thrust up into his face. He angled his mouth and swiped just the tip of his tongue on either side of her seam.

She uttered a muffled shriek, the back of one hand flying to her mouth.

He paused to kiss her on the inside of her thigh. “What did you just say?”

"If that’s true, then why haven’t you ever done anything or  _ said _ anything?” Her lips were stuck out in a pout as she glared at him. “We could have been doing this all this time. But you never—” she swallowed audibly as he pulled her folds into his mouth and sucked. “You’ve never made a move on me.”

Her arse was completely lifted off the bed as she whimpered. His hand slid up to palm one of her perfect breasts, his thumb stroking and pinching her pert nipple. Her hand came over to cover his and her heel was digging into his back. 

He hadn’t made a move on her, not in this sense at least, and her comment emphasised just how right Blaise had been—Muggleborn women were  _ not _ the same as Purebloods. Blaise wouldn’t have dared to do this with Ester unless they were engaged, but Hermione wouldn’t give a toss about that. He felt almost regretful at the misunderstanding, along with so many others they'd had and were bound to have in the future. If there  _ was  _ a future for them. It was just so fucking hard to throw out an entire life’s worth of misconceptions. Added to that, he had his sights on the most elusive woman possible, the one who’d dated just about every available wizard out there.

It was hard not to be daunted by the thought of so much competition.

He sank his tongue into the mouth of her canal and gloried in the way she arched up. “So,” he said, breathing against her folds and savouring the way goose pimples rose up across her mound, “how am I doing so far?”

“Malfoy,” she said breathily. “Now’s really not the time to pause and ask for an evaluation.”

He closed his mouth over her lower lips, rubbing his nose against her clit, and stroking her entrance with his tongue, simulating the in and out of intercourse. 

“Oh God, I’m so close.” 

Her thighs began to shudder around his face, and he pulled off to stare up at her, his hands still idly stroking the soft skin of her hips. 

“What—” Her lips were wet where she’d bit down on them. “What are you doing?”

“I’m waiting for you to beg me,” he said, and he casually kissed the juncture where her thigh met her hip. The force of her glare was almost palpable.

She was breathing through gritted teeth. “If this is your idea of a joke—”

“Hmm,” he said, pulling the skin of her inner thigh in between his teeth. “Not a joke. More like a bargain.”

“What bargain?” She was panting, a hand buried in her hair. 

He chuckled at that, and pressed the head of his hard length against her thigh. She inhaled sharply through her teeth. “How many times have you come in a row before? With someone other than yourself?”

Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell with her breathing. “The most? Two. Wait, there was once when it was three. No, two.”

“So when I inevitably beat that, then I’ll be the best you’ve ever had, correct?”

“Maybe,” she said, and when his teeth closed down harder over a patch of skin, she yelped. “Alright, yes!”

“Then I want exclusive access to this,” he said. He swept a hand over her cunt, letting his thumb rub slow circles over her entrance.

She let out a low groan. Her eyes rolled back in her head for a second before she refocused on him. “You want to be exclusive fuck buddies?”

Muggles, he thought with a roll of his eyes. “Lovers,” he corrected, keeping his thumb on her clit and sinking his third finger into her heat. “I don’t want anyone to have this.”

“This is…” She swallowed visibly, her chest rising and falling as his finger pumped in and out of her. He could hear the wetness of the contact echo in the room. “This is really very manipulative of you, Malfoy. Can’t we discuss that later? Besides…” Both her hands were gripping his hair hard, forcing him back down to finish his job. Her other foot had come up over his shoulder. “Malfoy, if you can beat my personal best and give me that many orgasms, then you’d have to beat me off with a stick when we’re through.”

God, he hoped so. “Challenge accepted,” he said. He lowered himself back down, and his tongue flicked rapidly over her clit. She’d been so close that she came apart on his face a second later, her thighs shaking against his cheeks. He kept his finger inside her as her muscles slowly relaxed around him. “That’s one.”

Her body felt more relaxed than it had a moment ago, and her thighs sagged back on the bed. She had loosened her death grip on his head, and had sunk a hand into her own hair. She panted, gazing up at the canopy above them. “Are you going to keep count?” When her breathing finally evened out, she seemed to notice her surroundings for the first time. 

“Mmm.” He surveyed her folds, and how they gleamed with her juices. His fingers continued moving and shifting, and he hummed against her thigh, keeping his face so close his breath ghosted over her sex. “You taste like a peach, Granger, did you know that? I can’t get enough of this.” For the rest of his life, he thought he’d probably never forget the taste of her. He closed his mouth over her folds again, and her thighs immediately jackknifed up around his ears. He could feel the fluttering of her inner walls before he curled his fingers inside her, and her hips arched high off the bed. “Two,” he said less than a minute later.

“That was cheating.” She was breathing harder now, and there was a pout to her full lips that he wanted to kiss off her face.

For her third, he flipped her over onto her front, rubbing his cock over her folds until she bit down on the bedsheets. The fourth had him tugging on her sensitive nipples with his teeth as she came on his fingers. 

He waited until she rode out her convulsions and her breathing evened out, his thumb stroking the side of her hip where her pelvic bone jutted out. She turned to him with a whimper. “Draco, for the love of everything magical, could you just fuck me?” 

His cock was near to bursting by then, but he was bound and determined to make this the best fuck she’d ever had. “Three more times?” he said, his head lowering again.

She growled and pushed at his shoulders so that he was knocked off balance, landing on his back. She climbed astride him, her hands pulling at his erection until he was gasping. He pushed her hands away to line himself up at her entrance. He paused and stared up at her. Her hair was a humongous bush all around her face, creating an aura that was almost angelic. It contrasted with the expression on her face, which was so sexy that he couldn’t imagine ever giving this up voluntarily.

This was where he’d wanted to be all this time, underneath this woman and held in place by her. Held in  _ thrall _ by her. His hands gripped her hips before he trailed his fingers up over her torso. He wanted to memorise every moment of this. “You’re crazily beautiful, you know that?” 

“That’s the sex goggles talking,” she said, tucking a curl behind her ear. Her forehead and chest were wet with perspiration. She wiggled against him, but he angled his hips away.

He kept himself at her entrance and reaching up with one hand, he tugged at a curl over her breast and pulled until she leaned over him. He cupped her jaw with his other hand. “No, you stupid woman. I’m crazy about you. I’d give up half my fortune just to have you near me.”

She stared at him then, for the first time without the sheen of lust in her eyes, as though she were truly seeing him. As though all of this were truly a surprise to her, and not emotions he’d been wearing on his sleeve for months now.

He half regretted saying as much as he had, so to distract her, he thrust up into her, wrestling a long sigh of relief out of her as he did so. 

He’d said too much. He’d probably scared her off. Despair should be rolling off him, but he was finally inside her, and she felt incredible, tight and hot and wet, gasping as he thrust into her until he was buried all the way to the hilt. He caged her face with his palms, watching her open-mouthed expression of wonder as he filled her, pulsing inside her. 

At the very least, he’d have this. 

He closed his eyes and kissed her, slowly, achingly, with all the love he had for her. Their hips moved together in another dance, gyrating slowly against one another, and then faster and faster until all he heard was the blood rushing in his ears and the sound of skin slapping against skin. Their mouths never separated, but at one point, he heard her murmur his name against his lips. The foremost thought in his mind as he rocked himself into a frenzy against her was that he should have made her come one more time. 

They succumbed almost in tandem, their lips breaking apart when he gasped his release into her neck moments after she’d uttered a short cry. She collapsed on top of him, and he brushed the damp hair away from her face and kissed her, fully, deeply, sweeping his tongue possessively into her mouth. 

With him still inside her, he rolled her over so they were on their sides, pulling her thigh over his hip and catching the back of her head in the crook of his arm. 

They fell asleep like that, their hands intertwined over her shoulder and their lips almost touching. 

* * *

It was a random shuffling sound that jerked him out of his slumber. 

One moment, he was lying stretched out in bed, and the next, he was wide awake and fumbling on the nightstand for a wand that wasn’t there. He jerked to a sitting position in panic, and his heart pounded as he glimpsed someone moving in his line of sight.

Hermione Granger stared at him with wide eyes, and his breath caught and slowed. “Fuck,” he said. His throat felt parched and dry. His eyes raked the room. His wand had been carelessly tossed into a heap on the floor, and he leaned over the side of the bed to scoop it up. He settled back and surveyed Hermione. She was fully dressed and sitting on the edge of the mattress, looking pensive.

There was something sour in his mouth that wasn’t altogether dryness, and his chest lurched in something that felt like hurt and alarm. “Leaving already, Granger?” he asked in an approximation of a nonchalant drawl that came out more like a raspy growl.

“I was just getting dressed,” she said, sweeping part of her hair out of her face. The back of her head was in complete shambles, and the sight of it reminded Draco of just how thoroughly he had fucked her into the bed. “I swear Pazuzu kept staring right at me.”

Her comment relaxed some of the tension in his spine, and he motioned for her to move closer. “Come here,” he said. 

She nestled up against him, perched at the edge of the bed. “I think I really needed that. Last night. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as relaxed as I do right now.” 

“You probably never gave yourself the opportunity to relax, what with all the causes you took on. Maybe they just made you feel angrier and more helpless.”

She blinked and heaved a long sigh. “I never realised that. You’re right. I suppose I thought if I tried to do more, I’d eventually be able to do something.”

“You bloody almost kill yourself trying.”

“We all have a death wish, I suppose.” She had one hand low on his stomach, and he made a valiant effort to ignore his morning wood and concentrate on her words. “I’m not lying when I said you helped me, in more ways than you’re probably aware. I guess I never considered Purebloods to be  _ people _ , not with the way I felt so ostracised. Knowing about all their history—that’s  _ not _ in any of the books at the library by the way—makes me feel vindicated somehow.” She shook her head. “That sounds terrible. I guess it makes me feel like it’s more of an even match. Like I’m not beating my head up against the greatest evil ever to have existed and failing miserably in doing anything about anything.”

It was funny how they’d been engaged in the most intimate act in the world last night, and yet now he felt the closest to her. As though the blinkers had finally fallen off his eyes, and he was seeing her clearly for the first time. For so long, he’d been thinking of her as a wonder woman who’d take him over and remold him into something resembling a human being, but he’d just realised that all her bravado was a facade for a young woman who’d been forced to grow up too soon, without having had the opportunity to transition from child to adult in the way that most people got. She acted as though she wanted to take on the world, but in fact, she needed someone to take care of  _ her _ and remind her of just how capable she was.

The thought made him feel strangely protective of her. Of them. Of this. It was as if for once he was privy to information she didn’t already have, and the secret was the secret of Hermione Granger, who needed to be needed, but who didn’t need it as much as she needed to be coddled, as she’d not been coddled since she began boarding at the age of eleven in a world far removed from where she’d once belonged.

She needed the pretense of being the strong one. A guise she’d adopted for so long that it’d never gone checked or challenged.

“You know this isn’t over, right?” he said softly, stroking her arm. “Between us.”

He didn’t think it’d ever be over for him. There was no one else like his golden girl.

She rolled her eyes but hitched a leg over his hip at the same time. “Fine, I’ll give you another round.”

“Even after that. Even after ten more rounds. I’ll make a bloody nuisance of myself around you. Fucking follow you all around town.”

“You’ve already done that.” She didn’t sound too upset about that, though, and it gave him hope.

“Then you know I’m more than capable of it.”

“Can I trust you not to jump to conclusions the next time though? I’ll admit I did it too; assumed all sorts of things. I thought you’d told Blaise and at first I was really angry. Then I sat down and thought about it a bit more and realised that even if you  _ had _ told him, you were probably dead drunk at the time. I was trying to find you to warn you, you know.” She sighed. “And you completely went off the deep end.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. It was ostensibly the first time he’d properly apologised for his actions of the past week. “It’s no excuse but—I was jealous.”

She tilted her head to the side and surveyed him as though this were news to her. 

He emitted a short laugh, raking his hair back just to have something to do with his nervous hands. “It can’t have escaped your notice that I’m head over heels crazy about you. I know I don’t deserve you but—” he almost couldn’t finish his thought for fear of what would happen if he voiced the thought. Maybe she’d suddenly wake up and realise she didn’t belong here with him. “But there’s no one else for me but you.” 

She was still staring at him as though he had grown horns on his head. Then she laughed as though he’d said a funny joke.

He shook her. “It’s not a joke to me, Granger.”

There was still a smile playing on her lips as she spoke. “It’s just that—we are so shit at communicating. All this time, I thought you’d decided that being friends with a Muggleborn was something that worked in your favour.” She looked down at their relative positions on the bed, and her mouth twisted. “Honestly—I have my insecurities too, you know.”

He scoffed at that, at the thought that she’d ever have to doubt his feelings about her. Whatever doubts there would be, he thought there couldn’t be anything more certain than how much he needed her in his life. “Honestly, Granger,” he said, using her favourite catchphrase. “I’ll take whatever you deign to give me.” He swallowed and covered up his unease by pressing a kiss into her hair. “For however long you deem it worthy.”

She huffed out a sound that was halfway between an annoyed sigh and a snort of laughter. “This is really bad communication on our parts. Really,  _ really _ bad communication if I never even knew that was how you felt. It’s not the start to a healthy relationship.”

Yet she didn’t move or rise from the bed. It was the sort of thing you’d say to an unlikely adversary. When all was said and done, what they had wasn’t understood by anyone but them.

He tugged her even closer to him, stuffing most of her hair under his chin. “You’re not going anywhere. You can’t stay away from a useless cause,” he said with absolute certainty. “And I’m the biggest cause you’ll ever meet. I’m  _ your _ cause, completely tailored to you alone.”

“Are you trying to be romantic?”

He grunted and pulled hair out of his mouth. He didn’t let go of her.

“I expect a fucking boatload of Galleons for that stunt you pulled with the photographs,” she said. She didn’t move from his tight embrace. “You know that, right?”

It was all the encouragement he needed. He jerked his arm out from under her head. She yelped as he rolled over on top of her, bracketing her head between his hands and pinning her down between his legs. “Anything you want, it’s yours. You know that too, right?”

Just before she pulled him down for a slow kiss that gradually heated up, there was an expression on her face that told him she understood just what he wanted to say but wasn’t able to say—at least not yet.

That was the thing with your nemesis—sometimes they simply understood what you meant without it being put into words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright. So. It's PROBABLY not the kind of ending approximately half of you are looking for, with a spelled out HEA. If I've disappointed you, I'm SO SO SORRY. I think this version of Dramione has two really messed up people, and they've got a long way to go before they can make a go out of being a real couple who communicates about their issues and do normal couple things. In my vision of this version of them, they definitely make it, although the going's full of bumps and rough patches. To put it simply, they need each other because they fulfill a hole in the other (no innuendo intended). I won't be writing an epilogue, but I'd still love to hear what you guys think (even if you hated it! Tell me why so I don't make the same mistake next time!!).
> 
> Thanks again for your support. I couldn't have done it without your wonderful reviews and readership.

**Author's Note:**

> Muchas gracias to alpha/beta Disenchantedglow for her invaluable help in wading through this trash. Let's just call this what it is.


End file.
